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Bernard Donnelljg 



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Father Bernard Donnelly 




Life if Father 
Bernard Donnelly" 



WITH HISTORICAL SKETCHES 

of 

KANSAS CITY, ST. LOUIS 

and 

INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI 



By 
Rev. William J. Dalton 



Published by 

GRIMES-JOYCE PRINTING COMPANY 

Kansas City, Missouri 

1921 



^gl5 



imprimatur 



►J^ Thomas F. Lillis, D. D. 
Bishop of Kansas City, Missouri 



October 8th, 1921 



Copyright 1921 
By Rev. Wm. J. Dalton 



OCT 29 19? 



©CI.A627505 



To 

Kansas City 

The home of Father Donnelly 

The city of his heart 

The scene of his great efforts 

The result of his aspirations 

The mighty metropolis he foretold 

This biography is dedicated 



INTRODUCTION 
CHAPTER I. 

CHAPTER 11. 
CHAPTER III. 

CHAPTER IV. 
CHAPTER V. 

CHAPTER VI. 

CHAPTER VII. 
CHAPTER VIII. 
CHAPTER IX. 
CHAPTER X. 

CHAPTER XI. 
CHAPTER XII. 



CONTENTS 

Page 
9 

Early Life in Ireland, Struggle for 
an Education. Becomes a Civil En- 
gineer and a Temperance Advocate 19 

Teaching School in America and 
Studying for the Priesthood . . 27 

Roughing it at the Barrens. Or- 
dained a Priest by Bishop Kenrick. 
A Gilpin Ride to Old Mines . . 33 

His First Parish in Independence, 
then at the Wilderness Edge . . 40 

Building the Groundwork of a Kan- 
sas City Parish. His Fight for the 
Site of Kansas City's First Church 50 

The First White Woman Born in his 
Parish. Her Recollections of Pioneer 
Days 62 

Bidding Farewell to the Independ- 
ence Church 70 

Father Donnelly as a Colonizer, En- 
thusiast, and Man of Vision . . 74 

Civil War Days and the Story of the 
Buried Treasure 80 

The Struggle and Stress of Recon- 
struction Days. The Drake Consti- 
tution 88 

His Work as a Missionary. The 
Hardships and Disappointments of a 
Pioneer Priest. The Golden Fee that 
was Lost 92 

Catholic Beginnings in Kansas City. 
Father Donnelly as an Organizer 
and Promoter of Religious and Civic 
Enterprises 98 



CHAPTER XIII. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



CHAPTER XV. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



CHAPTER XX. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



Some of his Reminiscent Letters, 
Reviewing his Early Struggles . 104 

A Priest Among Priests. His Re- 
lations to his Clerical Associates . 128 

The History of Kansas City's First 
Church Site 133 

The Coming of the Religious Orders. 
The Beginnings of St. Teresa's. 
Father Donnelly's Encouragement to 
the Redemptorists. The Founding 
of Charitable Institutions . . . 138 

Father Donnelly as a Secular La- 
borer, Engineer, Map Maker, Brick 
Maker, Stone Cutter, Lime Burner 
and Builder. His Work as an Actual 
Toiler 150 

Some Retrospective Letters to the 
"Banner." Looking Backward from 
the Sere and Yellow Days . . . 152 

The Man behind the Priest. His 
Democratic Sympathies. His Love 
for Children. His Shrewd Insight 
into Human Nature. His Love for 
His Native Land. His Practical 
Patriotism 172 

Father Donnelly as Student, 
Scholar, Investigator, Orator and 
Philosopher 177 

His Reputation as a Recluse and a 
Hard Taskmaster Dispelled at a 
Banquet. He Makes a Hit as an 
Orator with Great Orators for his 

Audience 184 

At the End of the Circuit. The New 
Generation Displaces him. His Last 
Illness and Pathetic End. The Great 
Outpouring of the People at His 
Funeral. His Unmarked Grave . 191 



INTRODUCTION 

BY THE AUTHOR 

Bishop Louis Wm. V. Dubourg of New Orleans, 
but living in St. Louis, wrote on January 30th, 1826, 
to his brother: ''I have long been convinced that 
nothing could be accomplished here without the re- 
ligious orders. A man living isolated from his 
kind grows weary of the apparent uselessness of 
his efforts. The intense heat exhausts his strength 
and checks his ardor. Too often he loses his life 
or in the fear of losing it he abandons his post. 
He is fortunate indeed if he does not prove the 
truth of those words of the Holy Ghost: *Woe to 
him who is alone!' and from a being full of vigor 
and activity he becomes a good-for-nothing and 
the scorn of his fellowmen." (St. Louis Catholic 
Historical Review, Vol. II, Nos. 2-3, p. 70.) 

The Right Reverend Bishop was not living 
alone ; he had vicars-general and priests living 
around him, and surely had no reason to get 
weary, but he accepted a promotion, becoming ar 
archbishop in France. 

How the hundreds of missionaries ''living iso- 
lated," like Fathers Badin and Nerinckx, the 
founders of the Sisters of Charity and of Loretto 
in Kentucky, like Gallitzin, the Russian prince, in 
Pennsylvania, like Palamorgues in Iowa, Ravoux 
in the wilds of the Indian lands in Minnesota, like 
St. Cyr in Missouri and Illinois, and hundreds of 
other early missionaries from New Orleans to St. 
Louis, and westward to Oregon — Bishop Scanlon, 
the first pastor and bishop of Salt Lake, the bish- 
ops and priests of Idaho and Washington — how 
all those, "leading isolated lives," by their good 
work until death, successfully contradict the ''con- 
viction" of Bishop Dubourg! Fear of losing their 
lives did not make them abandon their posts. The 
glitter of archiepiscopal mitres could not win them, 
back to easy lives in their own native lands. 



10 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

Not every disposition is suited for a life of soli- 
tude, any more than every disposition is suited for a 
life in a community. Fathers Donnelly, Hammil and 
Fox of the St. Louis diocese, the diocesan pioneer 
priests in Illinois and along the Mississippi, Fathers 
John Bergier, Anthony Dayion, Michael Gaulin, 
Nicholas Foucault, John Daniel Tetu, and Francis 
Frison de Lamotte, are instances v^here the soli- 
tary life did not cool the missionary ardor. 

The missionary who has a rugged constitution, 
v^hose soul is in his work, whose mind, like his 
health, is impervious to difficulties of climate and 
slow to give way under the strain of his efforts, and 
who, like St. Paul, sees only the greatness of the 
cause in which he is enrolled, does not crave or 
need the solace or support of companionship. 
Sympathy, cheering fellowship, constant advice 
and frequent suggestion would have hampered 
and discouraged the great Apostle of the Gentiles. 
We have reason to believe he could not have lived 
under the same roof with St. Peter. Shipwreck, 
now and then imprisonment in jails, opposition of 
false brethren, adversities of every kmd, did not 
make him a good-for-nothing, isolated though he 
was. 

There was a time not long ago when to touch 
upon the relative results of church activities 
among the missionary pioneers in America was to 
stir up a feeling bordering on rancor among the 
admirers of the various modern apostles. Ad- 
miring humanity will always divide on the ques- 
tion, who has done best? The early Christians 
were not exceptions. Some were for Paul, some 
for Apollo. St. Paul, in his first epistle to the 
Corinthians, writes: 

"For while one saith: I indeed am of Paul; 
and another: I am of Apollo; are you not men? 
What then is Apollo and what is Paul? The min- 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 11 

isters of Him whom you have believed: and to 
every one as the Lord hath given. I have planted, 
Apollo watered : but God gave the increase." 
(I Corinthians, 111: 4, 5, 6.) 

All were loyal followers of the Twelve Apos- 
tles, and all full of praise of what each one did 
in the advancement of Christianity. In science, in 
art, in every phase of human excellence, men have 
ever discussed the question, who is best, who leads 
all the others? Tastes will differ. In the cause 
of Christianity, the great chieftains present them- 
selves in different lights to different people. He- 
roism has as many aspects as there are different 
tastes and different ideas of what constitutes the 
heroic. The twelve fearless Apostles appeal to 
some, the martyrs to others, the sweet angelic 
nature to others still. The spirit of organization, 
banding an army by discipline and rules of forget- 
fulness ot self, awes many into an admiration of 
system, and makes them forget or underestimate 
the work of the units striving to the same end. 
The universities of learning house great minds 
struggling to forward every line of mental re- 
search, yet the workshop here and there pro- 
duces an Edison, who, singlehanded, brings out 
results unsurpassed. When Oxford was at its 
best, the literature of England was furnished by 
the Addisons, the Goldsmiths, the Johnsons, in 
the periodicals, and sometimes writing from the 
very hovels of London. Yet the University in its 
professors prospered and did much to enhance the 
beauties and style of the English tongue. 

In the missionary work of the world discov- 
ered by Columbus, the religious orders were first 
in the field. From Quebec in Canada they tracked 
the Indian tribes over plains and hills, along the 
Atlantic coast. They looked them up first when 
with Columbus they entered America. They 



12 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

sought and found them on the banks of the St. 
Laurence, of the Great Lakes, of the Mississippi. 
About one hundred and fifty years afterwards 
they came to them and lived with them along the 
Missouri Eiver, through the Great American Des- 
ert, over the Rocky Mountains, and, under De 
Smet, up into Oregon. The Jesuits, the Francis- 
cans, the Benedictines, went into South America 
and preached Christ everywhere in that great 
division of the New World. 

In this survey, where do we find the diocesan 
priests? In those days diocesan priests were in 
Europe in their respective territories, called dio- 
ceses. As their name indicates, they work within 
certain territorial lines. Their duty holds them to 
the people and the district to which they are as- 
signed. They pledge themselves to labor at the 
call of their respective bishops. Besides, the dio- 
cesan priests were not numerous and there was 
not much scope for them. The religious orders 
were everywhere in Europe, monks and religious 
were numerous in cities, towns, and country places, 
too. The diocesan priest could not, if disposed, 
go into missionary fields. His salary kept him 
poor, in fact men rarely become rich from salary 
as a revenue. The diocesan priest is the bishop's 
priest and subject, and can go only where his 
bishop orders him. To enter the missionary career 
entailed the expense of travel from home across 
the Atlantic and to the scene of one's endeavors. 
The diocesan priest had very little, if any, money, 
not enough at least to pay his way to foreign lands. 
Had he the means to reach his destination he was 
without side money with which to feed and clothe 
himself. Even a religious order in financial straits 
would not look like a born missionary band in a 
new country. 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 13 

Father Felix De Andreis was holy enough to 
be entered in the Process of Canonization, yet he 
was worldly wise. On February 24th, 1818, he 
wrote from St. Louis, where he had recently ar- 
rived, to his superior in Italy, Father Sicardi: 
'*We need whole colonies of missionaries with 
considerable pecuniary resources, in order to 
make rapid progress in these intense woods." 
Father De Andreis knew the reputation of pioneer 
Christians and native Indians. The former had 
nothing to give the missionary, and the latter ex- 
pected the missionary to give him help, for body 
as well as for soul. It costs a civilized man money 
to live even in the land of indolent savages, and 
though a man be a tailor and a cook he must pay 
for what he eats and wears even though he does 
put them together. Bishop Dubourg, who could 
turn a Latin sentence with Ciceronian ease and 
finesse and like a famed, gifted Irishman could 
say two things at the same time, minimized the 
value of the diocesan missionary because of the 
solitariness of his life and the lack of cheering 
surroundings, and preferred the religious commu- 
nities to the one-man worker in the new countries. 
Another reason he had perhaps away down in his 
heart was that the monk or religious would not be 
dependent on the slim revenues of the Louisiana 
diocese. The Right Reverend Bishop was a man 
of zeal and brave heart, but he remained a rather 
long time in Paris because he wanted to secure 
the means to live in a manner becoming his dig- 
nity when he should go to his western diocese. 
He could not husband the means he was securing 
in Paris if he were obliged to support or even aid 
a band of diocesan priests. Bishop Dubourg knew 
that the diocesan priest would be next to useless 
without some help to keep him in the wilds of the 
new West. So also would the religious orders. It 



14 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

would have added to the straightforwardness of 
his character had he said with the sainted Father 
De Andreis: "We need, we can use, whole col- 
onies of those priests only 'who have considerable 
pecuniary resources, to work and make progress 
in these intense forests.' " 

European nations with foreign possessions in 
Asia, Africa, or the islands, always find a ready, 
necessary and efficient helper in the Christian mis- 
sionary. Their claims over their possessions are 
strengthened and made easy by the mollifying, re- 
straining efforts of the ministers of God. Their 
soldiers need and demand the ministrations of the 
chaplains. Even France, when she was closing the 
churches at home and driving the religious orders 
out of the Republic, would send to the colonies an 
army to punish insults to the French missionaries or 
refusals to receive them. Infidelity might be the 
proper thing at home, but the conquered pagan in 
the French possessions needed religion, and France 
at least forced them to listen to the missisionaries 
and not dare molest them. Perhaps they sought not 
so much the religious impressions and conversions 
made by the missionaries as the obedience to govern- 
ment authority taught by the Church. And having 
sent missionaries to their foreign acquisitions, does 
it not seem reasonable to say they supported them, 
as England sustained the Catholic priests in the 
West Indies. 

The Jesuits in the Canadian territory along the 
lakes had blazed the way for a new race of mis- 
sionaries. They had explored the new country, and 
made known the topography and even the very na- 
ture of the soil of every place they visited. Their 
first work was done, and another awaited them. 
They were skilled scientists, and were by training 
at home professors and founders of schools and col- 
leges. Others could follow in their footsteps over 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 15 

mountain and vale, for the Jesuits furnished the 
world with maps of the pathways and streams of 
Canada and the northeast States. Then they re- 
turned to fulfill the second part of their oath-bound 
obligation, *'to take special care of the education of 
youth." 

Father Charles Van Quickenborne, superior of 
the small colony of two Jesuit Fathers, seven aspir- 
ants to the priesthood, and three lay brothers, had 
been in Missouri but a very short time when he un- 
dertook his first missionary tour among the Osage 
Indians in the Territory in 1827. His first visit to 
the Indians convinced him that no great or per- 
manent results could ever be accomplished among the 
indolent, wandering and indocile aborigines of the 
woods and prairies, ''which would at all compensate 
missionaries for sacrificing all their energies and 
resources in exclusive attention to the savages." 
(See Father Walter Hill's ''History of St. Louis 
University.") Strong language? Well, St. Paul 
used strong language about the people to whom he 
preached. An easy, generous critic might say 
Father Van Quickenborne's language was that of a 
chiding mother to her indifferent boy. Whatever 
way it may sound, it was a warning that the Jesuits 
had other aims in their good work than sacrificing 
their resources and available properties in futile 
missions among the Indians. Bishop Rosatti about 
that time was anxious to rid himself of a high school 
or college belonging to the diocese of St. Louis. The 
Jesuits soon became owners of it and gave most of 
their time and labor to the college. And what a 
blessing to religion in St. Louis and the United 
States at large that college has been under the mas- 
terful leadership of the Jesuits for nearly one hun- 
dred years! Father Van Quickenborne and Father 
Hoecken, the two Fathers Eysvogels, were living 
with the Indians in the Territory in 1836 and 1837, 



16 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

and in fact through their successors at St. Mary's, 
Kansas, are with them yet — that is, if there are any 
Indians left there. 

Rome saw that the religious communities were 
tiring and seeking other fields, so the Propaganda 
requested that missionary colleges be started in Ire- 
land, France, Belgium and Spain. The bishops of 
America, with new dioceses in the north and west, 
found in the priest-graduates of these colleges men 
willing and able to carry on the unfinished work of 
the first missionaries. No greater zeal, no more 
heroic endurance of bitter hardships, ever marked 
the lives of apostles in God's service than were dis- 
played by Father (afterwards Bishop) Baraga and 
his successors for years in the cold north peninsula 
of Michigan. Bishop M. Loras of Dubuque and 
Bishop Joseph Cretin of St. Paul were aided to 
wonderful mission results among Indians and pio- 
neers. They were all diocesan priests trained for 
the requirements of those early days. Bishop Mar- 
tin Henni, the first Bishop of Milwaukee, gradually 
found vocations at home among the diocesan stu- 
dents of his seminary. 

Nearly one hundred years ago the Lazarists in 
St. Louis prepared diocesan students for missionary 
labors in Missouri, Kansas and Louisiana. The 
priests of the diocese were soon as efficient in this 
western wilderness as the Fathers of religious orders 
had been in primitive times. They, too, soon be- 
came as inured to the dangers to life and limb as 
were their predecessors. And how many and how 
severe were their endurances! They frequently 
lived in huts without cooks and without help, and 
without nurses in sickness and accidents. The re- 
ligious had all their struggles with rain and swollen 
streams, with miasmatic poisons in new and savage 
countries, but they had the fraternal care of their 
own brothers who nursed them and they had their 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 17 

mother-house for a hospital when that was neces- 
sary. The rehgious missioners had to strive for 
means of liveHhood, but in crying need they had the 
financial resources of their order to draw upon. In 
1840 Fathers Verreydt and De Smet, the one on his 
way to St. Mary's Mission, the other on his way to 
the Oregon missions, met at Kanzas, now Kansas 
City. They both were in pressing want for articles 
of food and wear. They made purchases at the 
Chouteau warehouse. In payment they presented 
drafts on Father Verhaegen, then Vice-Provincial at 
St. Louis University. The drafts were honored as 
cash. Imagine a Donnelly or a St. Cyr drawing on 
their worthy Bishop at St. Louis ! Their draft might 
be honored by the drawee, but a repetition would be 
unthought of, because of the warning letter which 
certainly would have followed. The diocesan mis- 
sionary was like the Indian small boy whose father 
would pitch him into the fast current — it was a case 
of sink or swim. 

However, there were zealous men willing and 
unafraid, who, without financial support from re- 
ligious order or other source, undertook the mis- 
sionary life in localities where they could hope for 
only the most meager if any returns in a worldly 
sense, men who faced hardships of all kinds in a 
life new to their own experience, who overcame 
obstacles of a sort to discourage the bravest, and 
who, strong in Faith and purpose, toiled on in God's 
holy service until able to do no more, and who with 
their parting sigh could whisper a happy "Deo 
gratias," content in the knowledge that their efforts 
had not been unavailing, that what they had so pain- 
fully struggled for had been gained, and that it was 
all for God's greater glory. Not lea^t among such 
valiant ones was Father Bernard Donnelly, the 
story of whose life is recorded in these pages. 



18 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

At an age when youthful ardor had cooled, with 
a true idea of what confronted him, with the knowl- 
edge of mission life in the far West imprinted on 
his mind from books and from the lips of the early 
missionaries in Missouri and the Territory, Father 
Donnelly faced his chosen career undaunted. 
Through malarial chill and fever, time and time 
again, through the bitter cold of winter and the 
burning heat of summer, through trackless desert 
and over untrod hills and mountains, among kind 
but poor and thriftless squatters and unsuccessful 
people of western Missouri and Arkansas, with a 
cheerless, fireless hut to enter when long tours were 
over, without cook, without nurse or doctor, he 
struggled on. The strong frame weakened, the limbs 
lost their agility and the joints their suppleness, the 
lungs resented the cold air of the prairie and the 
mountain, and a cough preceded the wheezing short 
breath of the victim of asthma, his fingers were mis- 
shapen from many a rheumatic attack and from ex- 
posure in blizzards, but he never yielded to dis- 
couragement; with a smile on his face and cheer in 
his heart to the very end he said his daily Mass, was 
ready to answer calls to the sick and the dying, and 
was ever attentive to all the demands of duty. 



© 



CHAPTER I. 
EARLY LIFE. 

ERNARD DONNELLY was born in the 
town of Kilnacreva, County Cavan, Ireland. 
The day and year of his birth, had he ever 
known, he forgot in his advanced years. He 
knew he was baptized in infancy, for the priest who 
performed the ceremony w^as his pastor up to man- 
hood and often told him so. The rule of the Catholic 
Church is that the priest must make the record of 
each baptism, giving the date of the baptism, the 
name of the child, the date of its birth, the names of 
the parents and the names of the sponsors, together 
with his own name as the priest who baptized the 
child. 

When young Donnelly was born and for years 
before and afterwards, the English laws forbade a 
Catholic priest to make any record or keep any entry 
of a baptism. Schools were not tolerated in Ireland 
when Bernard's parents were young. The school 
teacher in Ireland was outlawed by the English gov- 
ernment, a price was put on his head and he was 
hunted like a wild beast. So his father and mother 
were unable to read or write, and records of their 
children's birth could not be made by them. When 
asked his age he would make a calculation by say- 
ing he could recall such and such an historic event 
and so must have been five or six years old at that 
time. From his recollection of events recorded on 
the tablets of his memory and connected with the 
career of Napoleon Bonaparte, he would say : "Well, 
I am older than the 19th Century." The small boy 
early picks out his hero, who must be a fighter on 
the field of battle or in the arena, and he never for- 
gets his name or deeds. 



20 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

His father's name was John Donnelly and his 
mother's was Rose Fox. A little while before Ber- 
nard reached school age, the English rulers of Ire- 
land had discovered that keeping Ireland in en- 
forced illiteracy did not make the Irish more docile 
subjects nor did it turn them into cringing slaves. 
This kind of persecution drove the young manhood 
of Ireland by the thousands into the army of France. 
The famed victory of Fontenoy, May 11th, 1745, 
when the English army was almost destroyed, sent 
the echo of the cheers of the Irish troops under 
Marshal Saxe across the ocean from Belgium into 
every town and city of England. And those exultant 
cheers of revenge rolled around the halls of the 
English parliament and made terror-stricken legisla- 
tors repeal one brutal law after another. Schools 
were among the last of all concessions granted Ire- 
land, but those schools were opened and maintained 
by the Irish themselves. 

The days of the hedge school were past : when 
the teacher, disguised, hid himself in the forest or 
mountain crags, where his pupils flocked to learn 
the rudiments of knowledge as well as the languages 
of Greek and Latin, and higher mathematics. The 
new schools were poor in construction and poor in 
furnishment. To a makeshift like this young Don- 
nelly trudged along, happy and ambitious to learn. 
Six days a week he carried his slate and "cutter," his 
quill pen and drying sand for his freshly written 
page, to the teacher's home where school was held. 
A block of turf was the pupil's daily contribution 
towards heating the room, and once a week each 
scholar handed the teacher as many pennies as he 
could afford for tuition. 

There were no readers for the standards as we 
have, and after learning the alphabet and mastering 
the spelling of words of one syllable, the pupils had 
to reach words of two syllables through books of ad- 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 21 

venture, of history, and of religious devotion. Such 
a faulty arrangement made the reading of simple 
words a work of years. Practical men all over Ire- 
land soon saw the lack of system in the new schools. 
Committees were formed from all parts of Ireland 
to advance and simplify the method of imparting 
knowledge. Children were classified, more meth- 
odical men succeeded the early schoolmaster, and 
suitable and comfortable buildings were erected 
everywhere. 

Young Donnelly was a pupil in time to benefit 
by the change for the better. His talent and appli- 
cation soon entitled him to promotion to a higher 
grade of studies, and his parents placed him under 
the care of one of the many teachers who specialized 
in mathematics. His name was Hugh O'Reilly. He 
lived at Cooteshill, a short distance from Donnelly's 
home. O'Reilly's reputation was known far and 
wide. Under him the youth acquired a knowledge of 
algebra, geometry and trigonometry. His next 
ambition was a course of English and civil engineer- 
ing. For these he put himself under the tuition of 
a George Alderson, a graduate of Oxford and for 
years a professor of engineering in a military 
academy near Oxford. Alderson's school at this time 
was in the outskirts of Dublin. In his second year 
here Donnelly resumed his studies of Latin and 
Greek. After three years of hard study Dr. Aider- 
son pronounced Donnelly worthy the highest honors 
of his class. His school days in Ireland were now 
oyer. Recommendation from Alderson secured for 
his pupil a membership in a civil engineering corps 
in Dublin. His next location was in Liverpool, where 
he worked as civil engineer in the construction of 
the Liverpool docks. 

A good salary and a saving disposition enabled 
him to help his parents in Ireland and to put away 
some money every month to pay his passage to 



22 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

America in the near future. Like thousands of his 
countrymen young and old he saw the goal of future 
success across the ocean. His parents were then, 
and while he was at school, the objects of his solici- 
tude. He found time while studying in Ireland to 
put aside his books now and then to return to his 
home to help his father on the little farm rented 
from a landlord. In evenings when the day's duties 
were done, he worked in stores and helped merchants 
in balancing their books. Even on holidays he found 
employment that brought tidy returns. He was ever 
a tireless student and a dutiful son. 

In Liverpool he identified himself with various 
Catholic societies and sodalities, attending early 
Mass on his way to work every morning and ap- 
proaching Holy Communion on Sundays. His ex- 
emplary life and scholarly attainments soon at- 
tracted the attention of the few priests then in Liver- 
pool. They were his guides and his advisers, and 
by their influence put him in the way of the best 
Catholic society and found for him a home where he 
enjoyed every comfort. Father Theobald Matthew's 
crusade against intemperance was fast winning the 
blessings of the world. He had torn thousands of 
helpless victims from the clutches of the monster 
drunkenness. Overindulgence in strong liquor had 
swept over England, Scotland and Ireland. Liver- 
pool was a workingman's city. Drunkenness often 
works its worst ravages among the people of toil 
and few comforts. Bernard Donnelly soon per- 
ceived the fell effects of liquor in the ranks of the 
toilers on the wharves and in the workshops. He 
saw many of his own countrymen, who came to Liv- 
erpool to get employment to help themselves and 
their poor families in Ireland, become slaves to the 
whisky habit. In young manhood as in after life 
when a priest he had a heart and a ready will for the 
unfortunate. 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 23 

After consulting his priest friends he started a 
temperance society. They were with him and en- 
couraged and blessed his undertaking. The Catholic 
pulpits announced the time and place of the meet- 
ings. A large hall could not hold the crowds that 
responded. Every priest in Liverpool and priests 
from surrounding towns were on the platform. Their 
presence was a benediction and their speeches were 
eloquent in approval and strong in appeal to join 
the cause. 

Bernard Donnelly's name was a signal for loud 
applause. With an outburst of unanimity he was 
appointed chairman. The Mayor of Liverpool 
thanked the young chairman for such a society and 
one so much needed. Although not a Catholic, he 
requested that his name be enrolled. Before the 
meeting adjourned Donnelly was elected president. 
More than seven hundred men and women responded 
to Mr. Donnelly's appeals by then and there joining 
Father Matthew's Temperance Society of the City 
of Liverpool. The large audience arose and with 
right hands uplifted repeated the temperance pledge 
authorized by Father Matthew. The Vicar General 
read the pledge from a letter of approval and bless- 
ing written by Father Matthew at his headquarters 
in Cork, Ireland. 

For some weeks Mr. Donnelly attended meet- 
ings held in various parts of the city of Liverpool. 
The meetings grew in attendance and the member- 
ship enrolled kept pace, until Mr. Donnelly w^as able 
to announce the new crusade eight thousand strong. 
It was not long until Father Matthew tore himself 
away from his great work at home and followed in 
the wake of the young local organizer. He opened 
every meeting with words of praise and thanks to 
Mr. Donnelly, whom he named the ''Apostle of Tem- 
perance in England." Father Matthew went back 
to Ireland but in a little while returned to England 



24 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

and lectured in every large city, praising everywhere 
the work of his young countryman. 

In 1849-1852 Father Matthew visited the United 
States. He lectured on his heart subject in every 
Catholic church and many halls from Boston to New 
Orleans and St. Louis. In the city of Washington 
he was honored by an invitation from both houses 
of Congress to address them in the Senate Cham- 
ber. While lecturing in St. Louis in October, 1850, 
the pastor of Independence, Missouri, called on him 
in the residence of Archbishop Kenrick. The Ber- 
nard Donnelly who years previously had unfurled 
the banner of Father Matthew in the city of Liver- 
pool had become the priest Donnelly of Independence. 
Words would fail to express the joyous hearts of 
the great leader and the able lieutenant. When 
they met in the Land of Promise and Freedom the 
rugged frame of Father Matthew had been touched 
by age and its infirmities, but his heart was as 
benevolent and his voice as powerful and his work 
as far-reaching as when last they were together. 
America was as ready to recognize a benefactor of 
the race as was England or Ireland. Father 
Matthew was an orator and an orator is one who 
persuades and captures. The American Senate and 
House of Representatives pronounced him one of the 
greatest orators that ever addressed their assembly. 
America proclaimed him an orator by joining his 
crusade in numbers over 500,000 strong. 

A success in a most benevolent enterprise, with 
a salary for his work as civil engineer and a surplus 
with which to make the declining years of his 
parents comfortable, and with fine prospects for 
social and financial advance, Mr. Donnelly had 
reasoned that his labors in Europe were complete. 
He had a yearning for other surroundings. There 
was an air of antiquity all about him from which he 
wished to escape. His native land was crushed by 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 25 

hundreds of years of oppression and ferocious 
cruelty. The very country he was leaving was the 
home of his country's oppressor. The very air he 
breathed was heavy with odors of prisons and jails. 
He felt enfettered, and he would be free. There is 
no freedom in a land where one's country and one's 
religion are hated. 

Washington and his land of true democracy 
were his ideals of the hero to worship and the coun- 
try to live in. Thousands of his fellow countrymen 
were happy across the Atlantic and many of them 
were writing him to join them. He had a secret 
deep down in his heart which he seldom, if ever, 
divulged. He believed he was called to be a priest. 
He would be received readily into the sacred ministry 
in England or in his dear old Ireland. He was more 
than once told so by clergymen high in the ranks 
of the priesthood. But he would rather be what he 
often called a free priest, secure from unfriendly 
national laws and interferences of an inimical gov- 
ernment. With that truly Irish and comical twinkle 
of eye he often said, *'I believe there are other ways 
of going to Heaven than through martyrdom." He 
made up his mind to go to America and there 
serve in the priesthood. Ireland had enough of 
priests, America needed more. He bade farewell 
to Liverpool and his many friends there and re- 
turned to Ireland. He spent some months with 
his parents and then took shipping for New York. 
Fulton's steamboats were still on trial. Steam pro- 
pelled the light craft along the banks of the Hudson 
River and frightened the Indians and the western 
pioneers on the Mississippi and the Missouri, but 
had not yet proved secure to the timid passengers 
crossing the broad and turbulent Atlantic Ocean. The 
sailing vessel that he selected was packed with his 
countrypeople, like himself fleeing from misery. The 
passage was anything but pleasant. There were 



26 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

few comforts on board, many were sick from the 
roughness of the sea. The time crossing was eighty 
days. 

One of the first men he became acquainted with 
on landing in New York, and that was through 
letters of introduction, was a Mr. O'Connor, a school 
teacher in New York, the father of Charles O'Con- 
nor, America's greatest constitutional lawyer. It 
was a pleasing surprise to find that many of his 
countrymen were school teachers in the cities of 
America from New York to the farthest western 
city, St. Louis, in Philadelphia, Charleston and 
New Orleans. They were in nearly every city on 
the Ohio River, and in Cincinnati. Everywhere the 
Irish schoolmaster wielded the rod and taught the 
young idea how to shoot. 

Daniel Boone accepted an invitation to colonize 
the territory of Missouri. He entered many acres 
of land at Point de Femme, about the site of St. 
Charles. He brought with him Marylanders, Caro- 
linians, Kentuckians, Tennesseeans, and two Irish 
school teachers to instruct the children in the rudi- 
ments of learning. Neither Boone nor his follow- 
ers had the advantage of education. Boone's school 
teachers were versed in many things. They could 
out jump, out wrestle, out box, and out run the 
nimblest of the semi-wild men they accompanied. In 
the school the teacher's rod was as essential as the 
book or the slate, pen or paper. The rod was as nec- 
essary to the teacher in his realm as the royal sceptre 
to the King of England on the opening of Parlia- 
ment. It was a sign to the pupil that the law of 
order was presiding. In the Irish teacher's hand 
the ruler was a connecting link between teacher and 
pupil, with the pupil at the end that brought shock 
and pain. He used the ruler, as he was wont to say, 
to drive learning into the pupil when the easier or 
more gentle method failed. 




CHAPTER II. 

MR. DONNELLY BECOMES A SCHOOL 
TEACHER. 

R. DONNELLY while in Ireland had prac- 
ticed the profession of school teacher. At 
short intervals he supplied the places of two 
different teachers while studying in the 
city of Dublin. He also filled a vacancy in a school 
in his native county where in youth he had been a 
pupil. His friends in New York suggested that he 
take a school in either New York or Philadelphia. 
Philadelphia was a close rival of New York in those 
days and the salaries offered by directors of educa- 
tion were higher in Philadelphia. Besides, Mr. 
Donnelly had the county clannishness then and in 
fact all through life: he leaned to men from his 
own county in Ireland. Philadelphia then and for 
many years after was the stopping place in America 
for men from Donegal and Cavan. They flocked 
there. He selected Philadelphia where he could hear 
the soft brogue of the North of Ireland and where 
he could enjoy the fellowship of his own townsland 
people. He accepted the offer of a well equipped 
school and a very desirable salary. After a year 
and more he was offered a better school in Pitts- 
burgh with increased remuneration. 

Clerical friends among the Dominican Fathers 
in Ohio, old friends and companions in Ireland, in- 
duced him to come close to them in Lancaster, Ohio. 
This invitation westward was backed by a letter 
from the Hon. Thomas Ewing, Senator from Ohio 
from 1831 to 1837, and afterwards Secretary of the 
Interior, and father-in-law of General Sherman. He 
was Secretary of the Treasury under President Har- 
rison in 1841, Secretary of the Interior under Presi- 



28 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

dent Taylor in 1849, and then Justice of the Supreme 
Court. 

Lancaster at that time was the residence town 
of some of the oldest and wealthiest families of 
Ohio. The West was no longer an unknown land 
to the Atlantic front of our country. Cincinnati 
was recognized as the point where civilization was 
free from the presence of the red-man. The few 
railroads skirted along the Atlantic coast and were 
more or less an experiment. Capital could not 
think of risking tunnels through the mountains or 
of building over them for a few scattered citizens 
living along western water streams. Flatboats 
were creaking under the weight of freight from 
Pittsburgh to Cincinnati and west to where the 
Ohio mingles with the Mississippi. Passenger steam- 
boats were sources of pleasure and convenience for 
the west and southbound passengers on the Ohio. 
Cincinnati was to the Ohio River what New York, 
Boston and Philadelphia were to the Atlantic Ocean 
— it was a point of entry and exit. The Cincinnatian 
was growing in wealth and he needed a suburban 
town in which to sleep, to live, and to have his chil- 
dren educated, and Lancaster shared this benefit 
with Somerset. Mr. Donnelly grasped this offer to 
teach the ''gentry's" children. It is not a weakness 
in nature to look high and go upwards. Donnelly 
was quick in taking advantage of such an oppor- 
tunity. Upon his arrival in Lancaster he was wel- 
comed by Father Martin and Father Young, Domini- 
can priests. They introduced him to Senator 
Ewing. Mrs. Ewing was a Catholic and insisted 
that the new teacher should consider her house his 
home. Some of the Ewing children were among the 
first enrolled in his school. While in Lancaster, Mr. 
Donnelly was treated as one of the Ewing house- 
hold. In after years when Mr. Donnelly was the 
Catholic pastor of Kansas City, Hugh Boyle Ewing, 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 29 

the son of Senator Ewing, and William Tecumseh 
Sherman, the son-in-law of Senator Ewing, were 
practicing law at Leavenworth, Kansas (1858-9). 
They renewed their old acquaintance and visited 
each other frequently. 

Father Donnelly until his last sickness kept 
"The School Roll" of his pupils at Lancaster. But 
the pupil he was proudest of and whose deeds of 
valor and generalship he was forever extolling was 
General Philip Henry Sheridan. The General's 
father was born in County Cavan and that fact was 
something Father Donnelly never failed to mention 
in his reminiscent moods. The General wrote his 
memoirs a few years before his death. He gave 
some space in the book to schoolboy days. He tells 
some interesting and amusing stories of his Irish 
schoolmaster in Ohio. While paying tribute to the 
ability of the teacher, he lauds his cunning. He tells 
that whenever anything serious went amiss he never 
failed punishing the guilty youth, for he always 
flogged the whole school. But for the teacher, Mr. 
Donnelly, then a priest, he substituted another name. 
When General Sheridan was in charge of the middle 
or western division of the army, with headquarters 
in Chicago, he frequently stopped over at Kansas 
City on his way west or from Kansas during the 
Indian uprisings. He invariably called on Father 
Donnelly. The General was a good raconteur and 
told many amusing stories of the days under Father 
Donnelly's tutorship. He would say to Father Don- 
nelly : **You were the best teacher I had before go- 
ing to West Point — you were the only one." Father 
Donnelly's repartee was: 'Thil, you were my best 
pupil. You rarely prepared your lessons, until after 
a shaking up, and you trampled on every rule of the 
school. But I always had a soft place in my heart 
for you — you could whip every lad in the class." 
When Sheridan, in 1879, was about to marry, he 



30 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

wrote Father Donnelly inviting him to perform the 
ceremony. The old priest keenly appreciated the 
honor, but sickness had weakened him and his end 
was fast approaching, and he could not comply. 

While in Ohio Mr. Donnelly had a friend and 
admirer in Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati. He 
consulted the Archbishop on his vocation to the 
priesthood. Ohio seemed far west, but Donnelly ex- 
pressed a preference for location and work farther 
from the confines of civilization. Ohio was well 
dotted with growing towns. He would prefer the 
prairies or the mountains for health and labor, where 
the laborers in the vineyard were few and far be- 
tween. Archbishop Purcell replied that he was sure 
he would make an efficient priest and used his good 
offices with Bishop Kenrick of St. Louis, to accept 
his friend into the St. Louis diocese. Mr. Donnelly 
was immediately enrolled on the list of ecclesiastical 
students for St. Louis and in a little while entered 
St. Mary^s Seminary of the Barrens, in Perry Coun- 
ty, Missouri, eighty miles south of St. Louis. 

Nicknaming has always been a strong habit in 
America. The "funny man" or the man who sees a 
strong resemblance in a person or place to some con- 
dition or extravagance elsewhere, immediately rec- 
ollects the likeness and to arouse a laugh mentions 
what he imagines the original. The aptness pro- 
duces the laugh and a name is made which is last- 
ing. Perry County was covered with timber, but a 
few spots of prairie were found here and there in 
the woods. These spots, barren of trees but rich in 
productive soil, received among the pioneer settlers 
the name of "barrens." The name of a few spots 
became the name of the surrounding country. Here 
in the spring of 1818 Bishop Dubourg located the 
newly arrived Vincentian or Lazarist Fathers. The 
Superior of the Lazarists, Father Felix De Andreis, 
who was born December 13th, 1778, at Demonte, a 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 31 

considerable hamlet in the present diocese and for- 
mer province of Cuneo, Piedmont, Italy, with four 
priests and one lay brother, came from the city 
of Rome at the invitation of Bishop Dubourg 
and took charge of a college in St. Louis and 
did missionary work among the pioneer Cath- 
olics in the vicinity. Father De Andreis had 
been a professor of theology in Rome from 1806 
to 1815. His learning and eloquence immediately 
attracted the attention of the Eternal City. Profes- 
sors from the other colleges were often seen among 
his auditors. Cardinal Delia Somaglia was a fre- 
quent listener to the young professor's lectures. He 
admired not only the solidity and beauty of his dis- 
courses but the piety and unction with which he 
spoke. The Cardinal, in an audience with Pope Pius 
VII, said : "Holy Father, I have found out lately a 
treasure of science and piety in a priest of the Mis- 
sion at Monte Citorio ; his name is Felix De Andreis 
and he is yet quite young. I heard him speak sev- 
eral times on the dignity and duties of the priest- 
hood and he pleased me much, so that I seemed to 
hear a St. John Chrysostom or a St. Bernard." En- 
raptured at these words, the Sovereign Pontiff 
immediately replied: '*We must not lose sight of 
this young man, for it is with such as he that we 
should fill the episcopal sees." 

In one of the most perilous and prolonged 
pontificates in the history of the Church, his king- 
dom wrested from him, his city robbed of most 
precious inheritances, the sanctuaries despoiled of 
costly gifts, his libraries and art galleries laid bare 
of their books and paintings, and he himself a 
prisoner in another land, with war raging the 
world over, millions of his children murdered to 
satisfy the ambition of a man who laughed at him 
and defied him, Pius VII lost sight of the young 
man so worthy of the episcopate. And how for- 



32 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

tunate for the young man that fate did not give 
him the mitre ! He would have died in some ob- 
scure diocese with a world of good never accom- 
plished. Instead, he breathed his last after years 
spent in the great work of helping mankind spir- 
itually and mentally. He leaves the impress of 
his plans and the wishes of his soul on the great 
men who followed where he began. His sanctity 
and learning were perpetuated in the Rosatti, the 
De Neckere, the Odin, the Timon, the Ryan, the 
Lynch, the Amat, archbishops and bishops, all 
learned and holy men. He lives in the lives of 
the hundreds of able professors and true exem- 
plars of piety and learning who taught and teach 
in the seminaries and colleges and universities at 
the Barrens, Cape Girardeau, New Orleans, Niag- 
ara Falls, Brooklyn, Germantown, Chicago, Dal- 
las, Denver, Los Angeles, and the Kenrick Semi- 
nary of St. Louis. The eminent Professor Torna- 
tori, to whose training in learning and sanctity 
the American Church is indebted for its greatest 
light in the Episcopacy, Francis Patrick Kenrick, 
Archbishop of Baltimore, was a Lazarist professor 
at Rome and at the Barrens. Fathers Alizeri and 
Lavazeri, Lazarists both, gave a fame to their 
Father De Andreis by their lore and the training 
imparted to the priests and bishops who studied 
under them. The Very Reverend Father John 
McGary, the second superior of Mount St. Mary^s, 
Emmetsburg, who saw a genius in the young John 
Hughes, the gardener, and trained him for the 
priesthood and lived to see him the immortal Arch- 
bishop of New York, left his Eastern home and 
joined the Lazarists and spent the last thirty years 
of his long life as a professor at Cape Girardeau. 



CHAPTER III. 
HE BECOMES A PRIEST. 



IT was to the Barrens Mr. Donnelly traced 
his steps when he left his school at Lan- 
caster to prepare for tne priesthood. His 
knowledge of higher mathematics, of Eng- 
lish, Greek and Latin, brought him up to philos- 
ophy and theology, and gave him time to aid the 
professors in the branches in which he ably qual- 
ified. He never tired of telling of the happy days 
he spent at the Barrens. He mentioned the names 
of every professor during and before his time, and 
could tell where and when they were born and 
the date of each one's death. Gratitude was a 
part of his nature: he never forgot a kindness, 
and, to be true to the real man, he never forgot 
any act of unkindness done him. 

Nearly three years of study and preparation 
for the priesthood brought him up to the Sanctu- 
ary. He was ordained priest by Bishop P. R. Ken- 
rick in the year 1845. 

Father Patrick O'Brien, who built St. John's 
and St. Michael's churches in St. Louis, a man of 
great piety and well grounded in theology and a 
student all his life, always referred to his old 
classmate, Bernard Donnelly, as the brightest 
scholar in his day at the Barrens. Father William 
Wheeler, who for twenty-five years was a priest 
of St. Louis always connected with a city parish, 
was a graduate of Maynooth College, Ireland. He 
was ordained one year before Father Donnelly. 
After ordination he was appointed assistant to 
Father George Hamilton, who started St. Pat- 
rick's Parish but left for Boston before the com- 
pletion of the church. Father Lutz succeeded 



34 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

Father Hamilton and left the diocese and was 
pastor for years of a church in New York City. 
The roof was barely on the walls of the edifice 
when Father Wheeler became pastor. He was a 
graduate, also, of the college in Dublin, a class- 
mate of Mr. Donnelly there and afterwards at the 
Barrens. His estimate of Mr. Donnelly as a stu- 
dent was of the very highest order. He visited 
Father Donnelly at Independence. In a letter to 
the St. Louis News-Letter in 1847 while he was 
West, speaking of Father Donnelly he said: 
"I was free to say even to the Archbishop that 
it was an injustice to Father Donnelly to send him 
outside of civilization, for there is not a priest in 
the arch-diocese as well equipped mentally as he. 
He is an omnivorous reader and conversant with 
several languages, besides his grace and aptitude 
for church ceremonial have properly kept him 
before the public eye as Master of Ceremonies 
Sunday after Sunday and during Holy Week at 
the Cathedral, at the laying of corner-stones of 
St. Mary's, St. Patrick's and St. Joseph's Churches, 
at ordinations, consecrations, and church dedica- 
tions. He will be lost in the land of the Indian 
and the rude trapper. Besides his manners are 
courtly and suited for the culture and refinement 
of a city." 

In his "Recollections of Twenty-five Years in 
St. Louis," Father Wheeler in July, 1869, speak- 
ing again of Father Donnelly, says: ''In my let- 
ters about a western town in 1847 I wrote that 
Father Donnelly was intellectually and socially 
too refined a priest for work among Indians and 
trappers. I now say of him that, like St. Paul, 
he is all things to all men. While educated and 
distinguished in manner he can and has worked 
like the tireless apostle he is. What a bishop he 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 35 

would be ! The East or the West would be equally 
proud of him." 

The morning of his ordination Father Don- 
nelly was appointed pastor of Independence, Jack- 
son County, Missouri. His Grace readily granted 
the young priest's request to spend a week with 
the pastor of Old Mines, Missouri. He lost no 
time in hiring a horse to convey him to the mission 
of his old friend. His Reverence knew a horse to 
see him, but never had owned a horse. When he 
rode behind a horse someone else held the lines. 
The horse he bargained for was tall and not over- 
fed, and perhaps it was hunger that made him 
skittish. There were marks on sides and hips that 
looked as if they had been worn into the skin by 
rubbing against fences and trees. The newly or- 
dained asked many questions of the stableman 
before even approaching the saddle. The answers 
he received were not assuring. "Yes, the horse 
had run away in his time, and had unseated his 
riders on a few occasions, but it was the awkward- 
ness of the mounts rather than the perversity of 
the animal. This *hoss' is all right, take my word 
for it." ''Couldn't you give your word to the horse 
to treat me as square as I'll treat him?" said His 
Reverence. **A11 right," came the hostler; then 
in mock earnestness he whispered to the horse, 
''This is a good man, you be a good boss." That 
was enough. So with a lift from the horseman 
Father Donnelly was soon mounted, but not easy 
at all. Then came the starting that was satisfac- 
tory at least to the man in the saddle. The horse's 
head, with the helping hand of his attendant, was 
directed southward, for Old Mines lay in a south- 
west direction. Father Donnelly was beginning 
to feel at comfort and had just said to himself, 
"Why, horseback riding isn't such a difficult thing 
as I was led to believe," when a hatless boy rider 



36 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

with a halter for a bridle passed Father Donnelly's 
horse like a shot, but not too swiftly to give the 
rented animal a blow with a stick he held in his 
free hand. The priest's recollection was that his 
hat flew from his head, his body began to rise and 
fall upon the saddle, the stirrups slipped from his 
feet, and the world around appeared to flee back- 
wards with the velocity of a falling star. Passers- 
by stopped and laughed and shouted — he could 
hear but did not deign a reply. The moment came 
as it always comes when a horse is running away 
at breakneck speed with a green rider; the horse 
gave a sudden jolt, and the Father felt he was in 
the air, and in less than a second was sure he was 
on the hard earth. It was not his head that made 
the connection, and the shock of the fall did not 
rob him of consciousness. He was alone, fortu- 
nately with no scoffer in sight, and that was some- 
thing if not a consolation. A first, then a second 
effort to rise, and he was on his feet. He felt he 
was pale, he knew^ he was in pain. There were a 
few rents in his brand-new suit, and his black gar- 
ments were covered with dust from much-ground 
macadam. The horse — well, he was out of sight. 
Father Donnelly was gifted with the vocabulary 
of his countrymen and admitted that he did not 
send blessings after the uncanny fiend. Then the 
hat. His idea of time and distance was very vague 
just then. What was the use of going back to 
search? It might be a mile or more to the north; 
it might have been five minutes or half an hour 
ago since the hat deserted him. Backwards had 
no happy recollections, so he would go right 
ahead. It was not long until he recognized the 
old-fashioned cottages of Carondelet. He directed 
his steps to the home of Father Saulnier. Father 
Saulnier was a jolly old soul and received the 
young priest with a hearty laugh and told his own 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 37 

experience of many years with horses. He told 
Father Donnelly that he would send out messen- 
gers to find the runaway horse, but Donnelly said, 
"No, I don't want to lay my eyes on the villain." 
After much persuasion he was prevailed on to 
spend the night with the venerable missionary. 
Early next morning Father Saulnier hired a slow- 
going animal and Donnelly proceeded on his way. 
When asked how he fared with the second ven- 
ture his reply was: "One horse story at a time is 
enough." He reached his destination, but the 
very day after his arrival a letter from the Bishop, 
expressing regret that he had to interfere with 
his pleasant visit, told him to come immediately 
to St. Louis and take the first boat for Independ- 
ence. Father Thomas Burke and another Lazarist 
Father were awaiting him in his new mission. 
They were in Independence and felt they ought 
to stay there until his arrival. They had many 
things to tell him about the territory which his 
mission covered. 

Some months previously the bishop had re- 
quested Father Burke and his Lazarist companion 
to visit southwest Missouri from the Arkansas line 
to what is now the line dividing Oklahoma and 
Missouri, and north to the Kaw River, and east 
to a point running south from Lexington. He in- 
structed them to find Catholics and report to him 
where resident pastors might be located. To the 
Lazarists this was not such a long and unusual 
journey, accustomed as they were to go on horse- 
back from the Barrens to Texas and from one end 
of that extensive country to the other. Father 
Timon and companions, and his predecessors, 
made the journey frequenth^ They were the mis- 
sionaries in Texas during the forties and fifties, 
as the Jesuits were missionaries at the same time 
in the district now covered by western Missouri 



38 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

and eastern Kansas. Father Burke gave a full 
report of the conditions in the vast area he and 
his companion traversed. Independence and Deep- 
v^ater were selected for residences for pastors. 
Deepwater did not receive its pastor as early as 
did Independence. This appointment ended the 
missionary duties of the Jesuits in this region. 

Father Donnelly did not lose a moment in obey- 
ing the orders to start for his new home and his 
first work as a priest. Such a parish, if you will! 
Only the two Lazarists could tell him what it physi- 
cally looked like. Father Burke prided himself on 
being a man of common sense devoid of poetic con- 
ceptions, and what he told Father Donnelly about 
his new charge was in very plain language and in 
no way laudatory of the mountain scenery, limpid 
streams and good sized cataracts in his mission. He 
no doubt recommended a few lessons in horseback 
riding and suggested some helpful liniments to ease 
pain and remove bruises. He surely did not omit 
recommending a convenient and capacious style of 
saddle bags and the warmest make of blankets. 
Matches had come from inventors and manuf aturers 
in the far East in 1827 and were not looked upon 
acceptably this side of the Mississippi. The steel 
and flint stone would make sparks enough to burn 
wet wood — matches might catch fire in one's pocket, 
the western pioneers said. He would require buck- 
skin gloves extending to the elbow, boots that would 
reach to the knees, a heavy fur cap with lapels to 
cover the ears. The face and nose were to remain 
exposed to the blasts from the Rockies and what 
were called the ''gentle zephyrs" of the prairies, and 
when frozen were to be rubbed with snow or ice 
until they became sensible to touch and returned to 
natural color. "Put aside the tall hat ; the wild look- 
ing people out here might shoot holes through it, and 
the Indians might take you for a wicked and de- 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 39 

signing American medicine man. You'll travel many 
a day to take in your great district. The air out 
here is very appetizing, and you will be able to eat 
anything put before you. Keep yourself in the 
friendship of God and like St. Patrick the very 
snakes will run away from you. As you are a canny 
North of Ireland man, take it from me, you'll give 
more out here then you'll ever get." 



© 



CHAPTER IV. 
HIS PARISH. 

EFORE departing for St. Louis, Father 
Burke handed the new pastor the latest 
map of Missouri and with lead pencil 
marked out his parish. The extent of the 
parish we may estimate in square miles. The annual 
Catholic Church Directory states that the diocese of 
Kansas City, Missouri, covers 23,539 square miles. 
Deduct about one-third, which seems too much, al- 
lowing for the counties of Lafayette and all directly 
south, and you see the vast space Father Donnelly 
had to traverse. Lafayette had a pastor at Lexing- 
ton whose mission went directly south of his county 
down to Arkansas. Father Donnelly was commis- 
sioned to look after the spiritual wants of Catholics 
in the balance of the territory of the present Kansas 
City diocese. In a communication to the Catholic 
Banner dated April, 1879, Father Donnelly touches 
on his interview with Father Burke. He wrote : 

"Dear Catholic Banner: I was appointed pas- 
tor of Independence in 1845 within a few hours 
after my ordination. I asked Bishop P. R. Kenrick 
if I might spend a few days with an old friend and 
companion of early days, the pastor of Old Mines. 
The permission was granted and I left that very 
afternoon. The next day after my arrival at Old 
Mines a letter came from the bishop telling me to 
return to St. Louis without delay and take the first 
boat westward for Independence. It was Father T. 
Burke, C. M., who after months of riding over south- 
west Missouri, wrote Bishop Kenrick that Independ- 
ence would make a center from which a pastor might 
radiate to all points from the Kaw River to Arkan- 
sas and from the parish of Lexington to the west 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 41 

line of Missouri. A soldier never responded quicker 
to the command of his General than did I. My re- 
turn was speedier and safer than my journey of a 
few days previous. It was under the guidance of my 
reverend friend, the pastor of Old Mines. With an- 
other Lazarist priest, Father Burke was to wait my 
coming at Independence. Instead he met me at 
Kanzas as I got off the boat. Father B. was one 
of my professors at the Barrens. He handed me 
a large map of Missouri with my parish cleverly 
drawn out in ink. I had learned before my ordina- 
tion that Father B. was on a tour of investiga- 
tion by order of the bishop. 'Here,' said he, point- 
ing out Independence, 'you are resident pastor,' 
then touching the point marked Kanzas, 'this will be 
one of your missions for the present, at least.' Then 
a third round mark or dot: 'Here is Deepwater — 
this will be your third mission. And your fourth 
mission — will be the balance of Missouri down to 
Arkansas and west to the Territory.' I asked him 
about the church at Independence. 'There is no 
church or a house for you — that's what you are sent 
here for, to build them. There is some property for 
a church willed by Bishop Rosatti.' This encourag- 
ing information was given me as we sat in a room 
of the only hotel in Kanzas." 

The few days Father Burke remained were 
made helpful for the new pastor. Father Burke had 
experience as a traveling missionary in Texas and 
had done parish work at the Barrens and at Cape 
Girardeau, and as far south as New Madrid. He 
was gifted with a hard practical mind and emphatic 
views. He had a trite saying that he frequently re- 
peated: "The only college I ever graduated in was 
the College of Common Sense." Father Donnelly 
on application would have been entitled to a degree 
in the same college. 



42 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

For some little time Father Donnelly was 
busy trying to solve a problem never suggested by 
the Lazarist. Father Donnelly was a man at this 
period advanced in his forties. The great struggle 
from boyhood was not how to master his studies 
but how to make life easy for his beloved father 
and mother. He knew the world and its selfish- 
ness much better than did Father Burke who had 
a home and comfort in every house of his com- 
munity the world over. If he had been fortunate 
enough to save any money from his earnings 
abroad and his salary in America his mind must 
have been at rest as he saw what was before him. 
If his fare from St. Louis to Independence had 
been advanced by his bishop, it was as much as 
the diocese could afford. 

When Bishop Kenrick took charge of his 
western see he found the new cathedral very much 
involved in debt. He called the Catholics of the 
city to a meeting, read a statement of the financial 
encumbrance, and asked that they would at least 
reduce the indebtedness. His appeal was met 
with silence. Not one cent was contributed. This 
was in 1843. St. Louis was largely Catholic then. 
Mullanphy, Chouteau, Soulard, Provenchere, Bid- 
die, Lucas, Hunt, and many other wealthy men 
attended the called meeting. Owners of steam- 
boats and the heads of the trapping and fur in- 
dustries from St. Louis to the headwaters of the 
Missouri, bankers, merchants, judges of the courts, 
and men rich in hundreds of acres of land in and 
around St. Louis were there but they had nothing 
to offer. 

In what ratio would Catholic generosity show 
itself beginning at St. Louis and going westward to 
Independence? At no time was Father Donnelly 
what might be called sanguine, except in the be- 
lief of Kansas City's coming greatness. The few 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 43 

years at the Barrens and in the St. Louis Seminary 
were the only periods of his life when he lived 
night and day in the companionship of others. He 
was never lonesome when by himself. He would 
go to work without delay. Work solves life's 
greatest puzzles in war and peace, in fortune mak- 
ing, and in building up great enterprises. He 
rented a room from a Catholic family named Gil- 
son. There was no church or home awaiting him 
at Independence. The Catholics there did not ask 
for a resident pastor; they were satisfied with the 
services of religion given at intervals by the Jesuit 
missionaries from the Territory. Father Donnelly 
quickly grasped his opportunities in his two little 
villages. In Kansas City with its come day, go 
day, people, and in Independence with its more 
stable population, he saw a sample of the same 
western lack of generosity experienced by the 
bishop in his appeal at St. Louis. The Apostles 
began the great work of God among men without 
any visible gratuities, but the Apostles built no 
churches, schools, or parish houses. The new 
Christians threw gold at the feet of Peter and 
Paul, but it is to be believed that gold was not in 
large quantities — just enough to support them and 
pay their expenses going from place to place. But 
pondering on conditions would never accomplish 
what was before him, and Father Donnelly started 
out to beg money from Catholics and non-Catholics 
with which to buy property for a cemetery and 
build the necessary structures for the parish. 
Business men and property holders in new towns 
have an ambition to see their home cities grow and 
are willing to help on in any way to that end. A 
church attracts the passerby. It is a sign of pros- 
perity and presages a future for the new settlement. 
A school is looked for when one is traveling to make 
a new home for himself and family. The years 



44 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

1845 and 1846 saw a tide of population flowing 
westward. The Mexican trade had a starting place 
from Independence and Kansas City to New Mexico. 
The Santa Fe Trail was opening. Teams of oxen 
were tugging along with tons of merchandise for 
the far Southwest and the Rocky Mountains. Re- 
turning conveyances with cargoes of Mexican wares 
were passing east for purchasers in St. Louis and 
points farther east and south. Nearly all these 
western commodities were unloaded on steamboats 
at the landings at Kansas City and at Shelby Land- 
ing, a few miles east and south of Independence. 
Father Donnelly saw his opportunity. He pleaded 
everywhere and from everybody. Property for a 
church was willed by Bishop Rosatti. His church 
was soon purchased. It was a frame building, 24 
by 36 feet, which had been erected for a wagon 
shop, and cost $250.00. The graveyard of ten acres 
was next acquired ; a residence for the pastor quickly 
followed; and then the great object of his heart, 
a school house, made the parish complete. He did 
not wait for a school building to look after the train- 
ing of his little children, for he used the church for 
a school. Out of his many cares, Father Donnelly 
gave the school several hours every day. He was 
the first teacher as well as the first pastor of Inde- 
pendence. He soon introduced into the new school 
building a highly competent teacher. Miss Mullins, 
a sister of the leading merchant at Independence 
Landing. 

Arrivals from the East in most instances came 
by way of steamboats which landed them at Kanzas. 
A few left the boats at Shelby Landing, near Inde- 
pendence. Independence is the county seat of Jack- 
son County, which was made a county of the State 
of Missouri in 1827. The seal of the City of Inde- 
pendence harks back to those days. The design 
shows four mules attached to the covered wagon or 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 45 

prairie schooner used in the Santa Fe trade. Car- 
avans for the long journey across the plains were 
outfitted and organized at Independence. These 
wagons, of the Conestoga pattern, were manufac- 
tured first at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and later 
at Independence. They were covered with canvas 
tightly stretched over hickory bows. Six, eight, 
and even ten mules drew these vehicles in the early 
days, but after 1829, when Major Riley employed 
oxen in transporting baggage and supplies for his 
soldiers, the oxen were found to possess greater ad- 
vantages for this kind of work and gradually re- 
placed the mules. The Santa Fe trade increased 
through the years, but after the Mexican War Inde- 
pendence saw with dismay that Westport was be- 
coming the assembling place for the caravans by 
reason of its convenience to the steamboats which 
landed at the foot of Main Street in Kansas City, 
where a ledge of limestone projected out against 
the deep water. To regain her prestige Independ- 
ence built a railroad from her public square to the 
Missouri River, to induce steamboats to land and 
unload and so cut off the river trade at Kansas City. 
This was the first railroad west of the Mississippi 
River. It connected the river traffic with the over- 
land wagon routes. The rush of Kentuckians, Ten- 
nesseeans, and people from the other southern states 
into the newly opened Jackson County ended at the 
Blue River. Very few went into the Kaw district 
where the town of Kanzas was striving for an exist- 
ence. The trapper, the hunter, the voyageur from 
Trois Rivieres, the French-Indian Canadians, with 
the few merchants buying and selling, made a dis- 
tinct and separate community. Kanzas was very 
small and lOoked like an impossible site for a city — 
indeed, outside the range of possibility for a future 
greatness. People with teams could find no room 
in the little front or levee for themselves and their 



46 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

wagons, and in a circuitous way around the river 
bend or through one steep earth road leading south 
and east, they headed for Independence, which af- 
forded a large plateau, to rest. Taverns and stables 
sprang up to meet the demands in Independence. 
The merchants at Kanzas hailed the daily boats, 
sold the passengers all they needed for themselves, 
and oxen, mules and horses, then directed them to 
Independence where those same merchants owned 
the taverns and hotels and boarding houses. They 
had their warehouses on the Kanzas levee and owned 
the one or two banks. Kanzas had every necessity 
for the westward-bound except resting accommoda- 
tions. The travelers went as directed. They had 
to wait at Independence until the government gave 
them permits to travel west or south. Those per- 
mits were handed them when Uncle Sam could af- 
ford a relay of soldiers to protect them over prairie 
and mountain and through hostile Indian bands. 
The Indians saw their doom at the approach of the 
cry "Westward Ho!" Independence boomed while 
this condition obtained. 

Father Donnelly received many favors for 
church and school. He dealt fairly with the mission 
at Kanzas and solicited for the demands that would 
soon confront him there. The future for him and 
his work directed him to the port of entry near the 
Kaw, the place where enterprise was evident. He 
was Pastor-Resident of Independence, but its day 
could not last. That city where energy and com- 
merce were in the ascendant would rule, while 
boarding places and enforced resting places would 
sink into obscurity as neighboring towns. In the 
height of his prognostications he caught at his 
breath, when news reached him that a Father Saul- 
nier was appointed resident pastor of Kanzas. Per- 
haps it was thought at St. Louis that Father Don- 
nelly's energies were sufficiently taxed with the 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 47 

labors of Independence and his annual visits 
through the south and west of his larger territory. 
Father Saulnier did not try to live in the little log 
resting rooms. He rented a comfortable four-room 
cottage near the river landing. He then opened a 
school in the log church and was its teacher. Jack- 
son County was then the happy possessor of two 
schools, the one under Father Donnelly at Inde- 
pendence, and the other at Kanzas. Father Saul- 
nier, a zealous priest originally from Canada, stuck 
close to his teaching and parish duties along the 
river front and on the west bottoms and the hill 
tops. His Canadian parishioners and a few Cath- 
olics from Kentucky liked him, but not enough to 
support him; anyhow, his abode in Jackson County 
was short. Possibly he thought when he came 
West his work would be among the Indians. He 
sought no help among those outside of his own 
Faith. Father Saulnier returned to Canada. 

For the second time Father Donnelly was left 
to look after the Catholics on the Missouri River 
east of the Kaw River. He was determined to keep 
a very close eye on the City of Destiny. With a 
light heart and renewed energy he once more took 
Kanzas under his care. In 1853 the inhabitants of 
Kanzas organized themselves into a city. They 
drew up a charter, elected a mayor, council, mar- 
shal and judge. Corporate limits were drawn, with 
Broadway on the west, Troost Avenue on the east, 
the river on the north and Independence Avenue 
on the south. Father Donnelly had been one of 
the first to advocate the organization of a city. He 
was present at the many meetings called for this 
purpose and on each occasion made a strong appeal 
to throw aside township limitations and become a 
city with a charter. The strongest objection to the 
movement was the physical condition. Except for 
the narrow strip of ground skirting the river, bluffs 



48 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

as high as little mountains were immediately to the 
south and west. The few hundred inhabitants were 
merchants, teamsters, trappers and fishermen, con- 
stantly coming and going, and nearly all living in 
the west and east bottoms. The property owners 
were willing to assess themselves to pay for all 
necessary improvements. But where were they to 
find the contractors? There were no hardy shov- 
elers to tear down the hills and fill up the valleys 
on the west. Father Donnelly at the public meet- 
ings met the difficulty by asking to be deputed 
to do so and he would bring hundreds of Irishmen 
from the East to dig and level off and make streets 
and curb them, and construct sewers. He also 
guaranteed he would have two men, friends of his 
at St. Louis, who would build a gas factory and lay 
gas pipes to bring light to homes and streets. They 
joyfully accepted his help. He immediately wrote 
the Boston Pilot and Freeman's Journal of New 
York asking his countrymen to come to the rescue. 
He offered them better wages than they could ob- 
tain in the East and promised to pay their way 
to Kansas City. He asked for 150 men from New 
York and 150 more from Boston. He put his guar- 
antees of good faith in the hands of trustworthy 
employment agencies in the two eastern cities. He 
made his offer in time to get the laborers here on 
the first boats leaving St. Louis in the early spring. 
He put a wise condition in his contract. He in- 
sisted that all the men be from the same county 
in Ireland. The readers who may recall one of 
the greatest drawbacks to Irish laborers at that 
time will recognize the shrewdness of the priest in 
this demand. He might have made application by 
way of St. Louis, but the Irish laborers there were 
not so numerous and were satisfied with their em- 
ployment and were busy unloading boats and in 
construction work on the new railroads going north, 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 49 

south and west of St. Louis, and coming through 
Illinois to reach St. Louis. 

When the 300 men arrived it was plain the 
eastern agencies had been careful in selecting and 
forwarding willing, husky fellows, and every one 
from the Province of Connaught. Father Donnelly 
interviewed them and was more than pleased to 
learn that they had to a man labored on public 
works since their arrival in America. He then 
insisted that every man pledge himself to abstain 
from liquor, at least while employed in Kansas City. 
With this they immediately complied. He had not 
forgotten his good work in Father Matthew's cause 
in Liverpool. Comfortable quarters for sleeping 
and eating were awaiting them. They were tem- 
porary one-story buildings facing what is now Sixth 
Street and running from Broadway to the present 
Bluff Street. Two Catholic families took the con- 
tract to feed the men and keep their quarters tidy. 
In deference to their part of Ireland, their imme- 
diate district was dubbed Connaught Town. Father 
Donnelly was attentive to their wants and their 
ways. He kept a strict watch on them, seeing that 
they attended Mass and their religious duties most 
regularly. As he said one Mass in Kanzas every 
Sunday they had opportunities to attend the divine 
service and approach the Sacraments. When the 
hills were torn away and other work done some of 
them remained in Kansas City; others went west 
or found employment on farms, or faced eastward. 



CHAPTER V. 
FATHER DONNELLY AND THE TEN ACRES. 



"'^^^^HE growth of Catholics made Father Doll- 
ys (r\ nelly think of a new and larger church edi- 
^ y fice. But an unexpected move on the part 
^^^ of his parishioners set back the very 
thought of building. Father Donnelly's keen eye 
and observing manner failed him for once. He 
had a way of finding out what people were think- 
ing about. He was not a mind reader but he was 
of a shrewd and inquiring turn. He was forever 
surmising and asking questions. He noticed the 
people whispering as they gathered in little knots 
on the church ground on Sundays. He soon learned 
that secret meetings were being held at a large 
storehouse owned by a prominent Catholic. He 
started around making inquiries. The plot was 
divulged. They were getting signatures for a peti- 
tion to Archbishop Kenrick asking him to sell the 
ten acres and two little buildings on the property 
and with the proceeds purchase a fifty-foot lot with 
a one-story empty storeroom down in the city. The 
storeroom was larger than the church they were 
using. The location was Second and Cherry Streets, 
adjoining the Chouteau home. He did not display 
any feeling of opposition, but said the idea was not 
a bad one. When would they hold their next meet- 
ing? He would like to be present; indeed, he 
thought he would sign the petition. His name 
would lend strength to the request. He came in 
from Independence to be with them at the next 
meeting. The attendance was large and repre- 
sentative of the parish. Mr. P. Shannon, a prom- 
inent merchant and afterwards mayor of the city, 
presided. The Jarboes, Chouteaus, Guinotte, Tour- 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 51 

geon, Troost, and Mr. Payne whose wife was a 
Catholic, with many others, were present. Speeches 
advocating the object of the meeting were made. 
One sentiment ran through the address and was 
applauded by clapping of hands; the ten acres 
should be traded for the fifty-foot lot. When 
everyone anxious to talk had been heard, Father 
Donnelly was invited to take the floor. He ex- 
pressed great pleasure at the large attendance. 
It showed the parishioners were interested in the 
welfare of the parish. The little hamlet of yes- 
terday^ is today a city; it must have a church and 
this is one of the ways of getting it. ''But," he 
continued, "I find names absent from the petition. 
Be sure and get everyone in the parish to sub- 
scribe. There is no particular hurry. Take a few 
days more to make a complete list of Catholics." 
Father Donnelly was with the meeting as well as 
in it. The people had won the pastor. The meet- 
ing adjourned. Father Donnelly mounted his In- 
dian pony and went home to Independence. He 
immediately wrote a letter to the archbishop tell- 
ing of the meeting, that he was present and had 
signed the petition. *'I did so. Your Grace, because 
I recognize the shrewdness of the old Irish saying, 
'If you can't bate the enemy, jine him.' I beg you 
that you keep this letter a secret. You will recall 
the ten acres they wish to barter away for a fifty- 
foot lot and an unused frame storehouse. Once 
before Doctor Troost and other promoters made 
the same request to your Grace. Kansas City has 
thrown off the appearance of an ungainly but 
lively little hamlet. We have dug down big hills 
and filled up deep ravines. Our streets are laid 
out and macadamized and guttered, and brick side- 
walks line each side. We have become citified. 
Our Catholics have all of a sudden found out the 
church in the ten acres is away off on one of the 



52 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

few remaining hills. They begin to complain of 
the fatigue of climbing, which all at once has 
become unbearable. The females of our flock say 
that going up to the log church is 'horrid' and that 
the streets in the new city are becoming impossible 
for shopping on Mondays because of the sticky yel- 
low mud carried down from the church every Sun- 
day. Then, your Grace, some enterprising real 
estate men looking for commissions are back of 
the movement and have aroused our people. The 
other village churches are looking for sites within 
the city limits. The city is daily growing in pop- 
ulation. The limits laid out in the charter are not 
extensive enough. The city must grow south. It 
cannot grow north, for the Missouri River is the 
north boundary. It must grow south as the trade 
is in that direction, and then it must develop a 
residence district which will sooner or later be on 
the plateau called Westport. Until that time comes 
the people will choose the northwest section for 
their homes. I predict the ten acres and immediate 
neighborhood will be for years the most desirable 
residence part of Kansas City. Where the city is 
now must necessarily be the business district. Be- 
sides, your Grace, selling ten acres for a 50-foot 
lot near the levee would be an egregious mistake. 
In a little while we would be buying another fifty 
feet to enlarge the poorly constructed building there 
now, then we would need more property for the 
priest's house and school, and it would be a con- 
stant patching up and lengthening out, and after 
a short time all our parishioners would have moved 
to newer and more desirable neighborhoods. Ten 
acres consecrated by the memory of Kansas- City's 
first resident pastor and deeded by him to your 
predecessor. Bishop Rosatti, has untold wealth in 
its stone deposits and the very clay in it for many 
feet down means thousands of dollars when moulded 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 53 

into brick. The ten acres may yet build a cathedral 
and institutions of charity and learning. Do not 
be hard on me if I have been a little foxy in my 
way of heading off the well meant intentions of 
my flock." 

Father Donnelly completed his remonstrance, 
and though the hour of midnight had arrived, he 
saddled his horse and rode rapidly towards Liberty 
where he awaited the first eastbound steamboat. 
The postmaster on board the boat received his let- 
ter and carried it to St. Louis. The archbishop 
answered the committee, saying he could not com- 
ply with their request. Father Donnelly was happy 
but not boastful over his success in saving the ten 
acres. His letter was really prophetic — the most 
aristocratic part of Kansas City for many years 
was the immediate neighborhood of the ten acres. 

There was merit in at least two of the reasons 
assigned in the petition. But the reasons strong- 
est to him was the distance for many of the people 
and the difficulty of getting there. The church 
was on a bluff looking over the west bottoms and 
the Missouri and Kaw Rivers. There was a deep 
ravine south of the church, running to what is 
Eleventh Street, and growing deeper as it neared 
Broadway, then taking a course east, skirting the 
north side of Broadway and making a short turn 
to Fifth Street. In the rainy season the ravine 
was impassable except for a very frail-looking 
bridge near the entrance to the church property. 
This bridge led into the southeast corner of the 
ten acres. The majority of the people had to face 
danger from bridge and water. Mr. Shannon, as 
chairman of the petitioners, received the response 
from the archbishop. He showed it to Father Don- 
nelly, who suggested that a meeting of the parish 
at large be held after the Mass on the following 
Sunday. At the meeting he told the people he had 



54 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

thought of a scheme somewhat similar to their 
written proposal to his Grace. Instead of exchang- 
ing properties, why not rent the store and 50-foot 
lot near Second and Cherry Streets? ''You will 
have the use of the property there for a nominal 
sum and still own the ten acres. You will have all 
the conveniences of the new church and none of 
the difficulty of coming and going." The sugges- 
tion took with the congregation. On the next Sun- 
day, Father said Mass in the frame building in the 
city, two blocks south of the Missouri and four 
blocks north from Independence Avenue, the south 
line or limit of Kansas City. The church held more 
worshippers and brought out some non-Catholics. 
The little altar from the old church was there, and 
the pictures. The hard oak pews, not even planed, 
were substituted by shining pine ones which were 
painted before the second Sunday. It was told by 
many people that Father Donnelly preached much 
better in the rented church. ''We carted down 
everything we could except the bell and the name. 
Father Le Roux never christened his little log 
church, calling it simply a church, in his transfer 
of title to Bishop Rosatti. I had in my mind a 
name most sacred to me from earliest days, which 
would soon be the title of an article of Faith." 

It was the sale of portions of the ten acres 
that practically built the present cathedral. It was 
the sale of the west half of the block on which the 
cathedral stands that erected the St. Joseph Orphan 
Asylum. The stones quarried from the asylum site 
were formed into the footing courses and range 
work as well as the window and door sills and 
steps to the front and rear entrances of the build- 
ing. Father Donnelly out of his own means paid 
the expenses up to the brick work. The second 
attempt to dispose of the original church was foiled. 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 55 

A few years and the city limits had to be ex- 
tended. The river neighborhood was given over to 
business and the many residents who could afford 
it moved to higher and newer points. The words 
of Father Donnelly were verified in his own day, 
the old church neighborhood was known as Quality 
Hill, where the wealthy erected homes that would 
do credit to the best in St. Louis and the eastern 
cities. Father Donnelly looked with watchful eyes 
upon the ten acres. They were to him like a sacred 
inheritance, and inheritances are sometimes dis- 
puted. 

After the Civil War the city limits kept spread- 
ing from the first charter size. Ten acres of ground 
daily growing more valuable looked to the Kansas 
City Catholics like a fortune does to wishful, waiting 
heirs while the grandsire lives long beyond the years 
allotted man. The city's growth and the increased 
number of Catholics justified another parish. St. 
Patrick's was founded in 1869. Father James Hal- 
pin and his congregation held services in the base- 
ment of a nearby unfinished German church named 
for Saints Peter and Paul. The new parish looked 
promising. Its people were largely new arrivals. 
They wanted a church. The city had not yet 
moved southward. The tendency was east. Main 
Street was the division line, and from Main Street 
east and west there was an elevation of many feet, 
beginning south of Eighth Street. The new pastor. 
Father Halpin, had just left the Society of Jesus 
where he had been a professor for many years. 
At the very first business meeting in the new par- 
ish the question raised was not how much will each 
one give to the new parish, but how much of the 
ten acres are we entitled to? A committee was 
appointed to wait on Father Donnelly and make 
a claim on what they maintained was theirs. The 
ten acres were again a bone of contention. Father 



56 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

Donnelly's response was a letter from Archbishop 
Kenrick, which he read them. He introduced the 
letter by saying: '1 knew you were coming." This 
letter, like all Archbishop Kenrick's letters, was 
very short and to the point. 

"Rev. B. Donnelly, 
Rev. Dr. Sir: 

"In answer to yours of Nov. 20, I wish to 
say, the 10 acres belong to Immaculate Conception 
parish. The coming new parish, as well as all com- 
ing parishes, shall have no claim on the site pur- 
chased by my predecessor. Bishop Rosatti, from 
Fr. Le Roux. Yours in Christ. 

fP. R. Kenrick." 

This letter headed off all further demands on 
the ten acres. A storm of indignation came from 
the disappointed claimants which finally subsided 
and was followed by a wholesome spirit of rivalry. 
Father Donnelly treasured the letters he received 
in the instance of the early committee, and this 
blank refusal to Father Halpin. He would read 
these letters to coming new pastors to warn them 
against any aggressions, and would say, "You see 
what you may expect." 

The new parish witnessed the German con- 
gregation insisting on a parish graveyard. This 
was a tolerated privilege demanded and enjoyed 
everywhere the German Catholics started a parish. 
St. Patrick's parish persisted in its clamor for a 
cemetery of its own. Father Halpin was succeeded 
by Father Archer, who, after a short while, was 
appointed to St. Patrick's Church, St. Louis. Father 
Dunn was the third pastor. He agreed with his 
people that a parish graveyard was right and 
proper. Father Donnelly's letter of protest 
brought a response from the archbishop forbidding 
any other graveyard for the English-speaking 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 57 

parishes than the one in the original ten acres. He 
also stated that the control of that cemetery would 
remain in the hands of Father Donnelly. Before 
this letter from the archbishop arrived Father 
Dunn had been deeded several acres for his parish 
cemetery. The present came from a prominent 
member of Father Donnelly's parish. Of course, the 
new site was never used for the purpose of the 
transfer. 

The 2nd and Cherry Street Church served its 
purpose well — there was quiet in the parish except 
for the usual grumblers who refused to contribute 
their share in paying the rent of the 50-foot lot 
and the church. Father Donnelly observed that 
some of his people who had homes near the rented 
property were disposing of them and purchasing 
near Broadway and not far from the old original 
property. Business was encroaching. He satisfied 
himself that the ten acres near 12th Street had 
ideal soil for brickmaking. He made test after 
test and then with the help of two brickmakers 
from St. Louis he began the manufacture of brick. 
He claimed his was the first large brickyard ever 
opened in Kansas City. Several business houses 
and many residences were constructed of his prod- 
uct. Bricks of course commanded a good price, 
but lumber cost more because it had to be shipped 
a great distance from the East. Kansas was a 
vast prairie. The industries in St. Joseph, Liberty, 
Weston and Lexington, all neighboring and larger 
towns than Kansas City, were tobacco and hemp 
factories. Negro slaves were the workmen. Form- 
ing materials for buildings must have "been ex- 
clusively in the hands of white men, and the native 
white man that was forced to work in the slave 
states selected an occupation that afforded him 
plenty of time to lounge. 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 59 

When his brickyard was under way, Father 
Donnelly worked for hours daily side by side with 
his help. The venture was a paying one and he soon 
had money enough in the local banks to justify him 
in proclaiming in newspaper and church and to the 
citizens as he met them that he would soon start on 
a new brick church. The bricks were on hand, the 
stone for the foundation and trimmings were near 
the site of the coming structure and the location 
would face Broadway on the ten acres. The glitter 
from the new city had dimmed and people were look- 
ing for building places that would give ample room 
and the comforts of air and sunshine, just a little 
outside corporation lines. A city narrowed down 
like Kansas City was certain to be dusty and 
smoky. Grass and trees fade and die from smoke 
and dust off streets. The ten acres, free from the 
trampling of people for a few years, were carpeted 
with a verdure of blue grass planted with the best 
Kentucky seed. The trees were well kept. Out- 
side of the four acre portion alloted to the cemetery 
the grounds were converted into a shaded park 
with seats and walks. The old church property 
became a popular visiting place on Sundays and 
holidays. What a delightful site for a church! 
How pleased the people were at the prospect of 
soon coming back to the first location ! Father 
Donnelly had won again, and this was a victory 
— he was leading his flock home again! 

Father Donnelly resumed his letters to the 
Boston Pilot and the New York Freeman's Jour- 
nal after the arrival of the 300 laborers to tear 
down the bluffs and small mountains and fill up 
the valleys and hollows made by the rains and 
springs on their way to the Missouri and Kaw 
Rivers. Many desirable families heeded his ad- 
vice and came west, some of them to make their 
homes in Kansas City and others to farm in Jack- 



60 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

son County and in Kansas. The growth of Catho- 
lics in and close to Kansas City demanded a new 
church. He had money on hand from collections 
and from the sale of bricks made on the ten acres 
and of stone taken out of the property, and of 
lime from the two lime kilns he had in operation 
for months. With the archbishop's permission he 
started on the excavations. The footing courses 
were soon in place and the stone ranges went up 
quickly. The date of the cornerstone laying was 
the second Sunday after Pentecost, 1856. The 
ceremony attracted a very large attendance. Boat 
excursions brought people from Liberty and Wes- 
ton, from St. Joseph, and a company of soldiers 
from Fort Leavenworth. It would seem that every- 
body in Independence and Kansas City turned out. 
Father Hammil came all the way from Lexington 
and brought many people with him. From St. 
Louis came Fathers William Wheeler, Patrick 
O'Brien, and the venerable Father Saulnier, the 
priest whom Father Donnelly visited on his way 
to Old Mines the day of his ordination. Two 
Jesuit Fathers from St. Mary's, Kansas, kindly 
gave their presence. Father O'Brien preached 
the sermon and Father Donnelly laid the corner- 
stone. The size of the edifice was 30 by 60 feet. 
The walls were of brick, made and carefully se- 
lected by the pastor and his helpers in his parish 
brickyard. 

Father Donnelly was ready to entertain his 
reverend guests. East of the new cornerstone 
he had just completed a two-story house for a 
residence. In his reveries — and he w^as forever 
planning and looking ahead — he could see himself 
comfortably ensconced in the largest brick pas- 
toral residence west of St. Louis, a few feet from 
the largest and the best put-together church be- 
tween the Kaw and Mississippi Rivers. But how 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 61 

men's dreams "gang aft agley!" Father Don- 
nelly pushed on the church structure without any 
unnecessary delay. In early summer he dedicated 
the church. The dedication sermon was delivered 
by Bishop Miege, Vicar-Apostolic of Kansas, who 
also performed the dedication ceremonies. Dur- 
ing all this labor Father Donnelly would steal away 
to Independence perhaps three times a week. He 
was resident pastor of Independence and simply 
missionary priest at Kansas City. It would sound 
better and be in keeping with Canon titles to call 
his Kansas City church a ''chapel of ease," a suc- 
cursal church. He did not give the name of a 
saint to the chapel on 5th Street, and he tells in a 
letter to the Catholic Banner that it was Father 
De Smet who christened the unnamed log church St. 
Francis Regis. On the day of dedication, before 
Bishop Miege began the ceremonies. Father Don- 
nelly, standing on the altar, announced: 'This 
church will be dedicated to the Virgin Mother 
under the title of Immaculate Conception." By 
that title the bishop dedicated it, by that title it 
was known and called by bishops, priests and peo- 
ple, and when the first bishop of Kansas City 
dedicated his cathedral he announced to the vast 
congregation, "I now take the name Mary Immacu- 
late from the little church near by and hand it 
over to our new cathedral. Let it be called Im- 
maculate Conception Cathedral." The writer was 
present in the sanctuary the day of the dedica- 
tion of the cathedral and heard these words of the 
bishop, and preached the dedication sermon. 



CHAPTER VI. 

MRS. DILLON'S RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY 

DAYS. 



At the suggestion of the writer, in 1878, Mrs. 
Dillon, Kansas City's oldest native resident, wrote 
her recollections of the early days for publication 
in the Catholic Banner. Her account follows: 
Editor of Catholic Banner: 

I cheerfully comply with your request to 
write about myself and early Kansas City 
for your newspaper. I have the proud 
distinction of being the first white child 
born on the site of Westport. I never heard of any 
Indian child born before me here and so I presume 
I am the very first child of any kind or race born 
here. Indians may have and no doubt did pass 
back and forth but never pitched their tents in 
these parts. The Indians, like the first white men, 
lived close to streams for the same reason the 
whites did — because it was easier of ingress and 
egress, and because they found food in the fishes 
that were in the Kansas and Missouri Rivers. They 
hunted on the plains where the buffaloes and other 
wild animals were in abundance. The soil was 
productive, so they had plenty to eat. 

My parents came from Kentucky. They lived 
for a little while after their arrival on the bottom 
land near the Kaw known as the West bottoms, to 
distinguish it from the bottoms east, or East bot- 
toms. The West bottoms were held in preference 
by newcomers, because they faced on two rivers. 
One day my father strayed over the big bluffs and 
after a few miles' walk southward came to the 
high level known now as Westport. On his return 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 63 

he told Mother that the place he had visited was 
more desirable for a home as it was much cooler 
and was away from the damp fogs of the streams, 
and the soil reminded him of Kentucky. The low 
lands were sandy. Besides in his native state he 
had lived near the Ohio River and on two different 
occasions was driven out of his home by high 
water floods. On his walk south he found two 
Kentucky families who advised him strongly to 
come out near them and they would help him cut 
down trees and build a log cabin. Mother assented 
and next day they put their few belongings in their 
wagon and drove south. They were kindly re- 
ceived, and the very next day set to work cutting 
the timber. Within a week, with the help of their 
neighbors, they had their small log house ready 
for occupation. It was one-story and 8x12 feet 
in size. It was in this log cabin I was born on 
March 25th, 1820. The ground was no man's 
land, my parents were told ; it was in territory 
ceded some little time before to the United States 
by the Osage Tribe of Indians. Father never gave 
a thought to ownership nor preemption nor squat- 
ter's right — just took possession. Our two neighbors 
were equally careless about title. Another way to 
acquire property at that time was by government 
patent, but they knew nothing about patents from 
Uncle Sam. 

It was easy to keep the home warm, for wood 
was plentiful. But the larder had to be provided 
for. In the West bottoms the Astor Fur Com- 
pany needed food and lodging for their employees 
and the Canadian-French were making more than 
a living feeding and rooming the hunters and 
trappers and selling garden products to the fur 
boats and to men passing in skiffs north and 
south. Nature had made a good landing place 
or levee between the West and East bottoms. And 



64 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

soldiers on their way to the Fort Leavenworth 
would go to the Canadian squatters for potatoes, 
chickens and prairie birds, and sometimes make 
contracts for a regular supply for the army. Money 
was passing hands and a few stores were doing 
good business. There was some stir in the bot- 
toms and my parents were soon forced by a con- 
stantly thinning out of their purse to leave their 
new home and go back to the sandy soil they had 
recently left. Our Canadian friends welcomed us 
back. They told my parents that a Catholic priest 
from Florissant had promised to visit them and ad- 
minister the consolations of religion. '*0h," said 
they to Mother, ''there are many little children 
who will be baptized when he comes." It was in 
1821, early in spring, he arrived. His name was 
Father La Croix. 

During my parents' stay here before going to 
what is now Westport, a goodly number of our 
neighbors would go to the home of Peter Clement 
Lessert every Sunday to recite Catholic prayers, in 
lieu of Mass, for up to the coming of Father La 
Croix no priest had ever visited here. My parents 
were very friendly with their Canadian neighbors 
and went every Sunday to the prayer meeting. 
Father and Mother at that time were not affiliated 
to any church. Their neighbors were good, simple 
people and their church had made them such. It 
did not require much persuasion to induce my par- 
ents to consent to have my brother, three years 
of age, and me, their baby, baptized by Father 
La Croix. He remained here about a month. Mass 
and other services were held in the home of Clem- 
ent Lessert. Before Father left here for St. Joseph 
my parents were baptized by him. My Godparents 
were Callis Montardeau and his wife Helois. The 
date of my baptism was May 14th, 1821. Father 
La Croix spent some weeks in and around St. 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 65 

Joseph and then went north to the Sioux country — 
it was called by that name and is now Sioux City. 
He returned to west bottoms in the fall and said 
Mass two Sundays. This time the Mass was said 
the first Sunday in the home of Peter La Liberte 
and the second Sunday in Francois Trumley's resi- 
dence in tne west bottoms. The Chouteau family 
had not yet arrived and all the Catholics were in 
the west bottoms. 

The historical data I am now giving you is not 
reminiscent, as I was not at a mentally receptive 
condition at the time I am mentioning. I have 
before me a diary given me in my tenth year by 
my Godmother, Mrs. Montardeau. She was an edu- 
cated woman, who before the days of the French 
Revolution was a student in one of the best convent 
academies in her native France. Her parents were 
killed by the madmen of those days and her prop- 
erty confiscated. She came out West from Canada. 
You asked me for church history. I find in this 
diary or memorandum book that the next priest 
who visited this site was Father Joseph Lutz from 
the Cathedral at St. Louis. He made his home 
with the Montardeau family. He was of German 
birth but spoke French and English well. From 
the West Kansas bottoms he visited the Kaw and 
Kickapoo Tribes. It was from the Kaw Tribes 
Kansas and Kansas City got their names. They 
were nearly all Catholics and were the Indians that 
called on Bishop Rosatti for a priest. Father Lutz 
was secretary to Bishop Rosatti and in 1845 built 
St. Patrick's Church in St. Louis. He left St. Louis 
and became pastor of a church in New York City, 
where he died. He returned his calls to this place 
at intervals as late as the spring of 1844. I find 
in the Montardeau diary that his last appearance 
here was in the early spring of 1844. He left in 
time to escape the great flood of 1844. 



6Q Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

I often thought over what I heard many a 
Catholic mother say when I was a child: "What 
a terrible affliction families bring on themselves 
by moving into new and distant countries and thus 
cutting themselves away from all the benefits and 
consolations of religion. The struggle for exist- 
ence in new parts is nothing nearly so hard as the 
feeling, we are bereft of God's best ministrations in 
life and death. What a happy news when the word 
went around that a priest is coming to us!" 

Father Roux came here in 1833. I can recall 
his arrival. While here he lived with the Chouteau 
family, whose residence then and for many years 
was where Cherry and Second Streets meet. He 
said Mass in the Chouteau residence every Sunday. 
Close to the Chouteaus was a small frame build- 
ing used by Father Donnelly for church purposes, 
when the Catholics tired of climbing up the hills 
to the log church. 

Father Roux visited here from Kaskaskia on 
at least two occasions after leaving this part of 
the world. It was Father Roux who purchased the 
ten acres and gave them to Bishop Rosatti for a 
consideration of two dollars. Father Donnelly held 
on to the ten acres with the log church and office 
or rest structure nearby. Neither Father Roux 
nor any of the succeeding priests ever lived in this 
little log affair. It is still standing and is always 
called Kansas City's first parsonage, but in fact 
never was fitted or occupied by any priest coming, 
going, or staying here. 

Fathers Van Quickenborne and P. Van Hoecken 
passed here on their first visit to the Kickapoo 
village in 1836. The memory of the Jesuit Fathers 
is as clear to me as events of yesterday. They 
lived with the Pottawatomie Indians and attended 
here at intervals until the coming of Father Don- 
nelly in 1845. I often heard from Father Donnelly 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 67 

that it was Father De Smet who gave the name 
St. Francis Regis to the little log church. You ask 
me about St. Xavier's Church. There never was 
any such church here. The one church structure 
was all required. A church at Westport — let me 
tell you I was at Mass the Sunday Bishop Kenrick 
appeared here. I recall he baptized and confirmed 
before beginning Mass. He put down the names 
of the baptized and confirmed and requested that 
the entries be made at the church at Westport. 
Before taking a boat for St. Louis he was waited 
on by nearly all the Catholics. Among other things 
he told us that he wished the baptisms and con- 
firmations done by him the last Sunday be for- 
warded to the Westport Church. ''Westport 
Church?" said Mr. Chouteau, 'There is no such 
church. Ours is the only church in these parts." 
"Why," said the Bishop, "I was informed there 
was a church at Westport, and as there was no 
priest to receive me here I made the request after 
writing the names. Where do the Fathers live 
who attend here?" "Over the line some miles in 
the Territory," replied Mr. Chouteau. "I am ex- 
pecting a long visit from a Bishop friend, and shall 
request him to visit here all through these parts 
to give me a correct report of churches and mis- 
sions." A bishop named Barron soon arrived and 
went west to the Jesuits for some days. Our own 
bishop seemed displeased to have no priest when 
he reached here, and said something about "vision 
churches." 

The coming of Father De Smet was always 
a gala day. Everyone knew and loved him and 
everybody has heard and read of his many con- 
versions in the Indian tribes. Father Donnelly is 
a combination of the missionary and the resident 
priest. He is a man of great versatility and earnest- 
ness. He is tanned by the sun, and hardened by the 



68 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

chill of the winter. He and his Indian pony are 
known from Kansas all through southeast Missouri. 

Father Roux was a son of a family of means 
abroad. He was not a forceful character, but rather 
inclined to be just going to do something. He 
surely did a wise thing when he purchased the ten 
acres for the coming church. Father Roux was 
of commanding appearance, with light hair and 
refined taste. 

Father Saulnier, who was here for a little over 
one year, has the credit of starting and teaching 
the first school ever in Kansas City. His stay was 
entirely too short. From Father La Croix, the 
first priest, to Father Dalton, the latest arrival, I 
have had some acquaintance with everyone. 

When I married Mr. Dillon I soon found my- 
self on my native heath, where I was born. All 
during the days of the Santa Fe trail and when 
hundreds were traveling to the California and 
Pike's Peak gold regions, Westport was a lively 
village. It was all tents and looked like the resting 
place of an army. Few buildings went up. Nearly 
all the arrivals came with tents and lived in them 
while waiting for a cavalcade of soldiers for safety 
going through the plains and over the mountains. 
It seems like yesterday since newly appointed 
bishops and their priests would pitch their tents 
in and around our town. They said Mass in the 
tents every morning. Occasionally on a Sunday I 
would request a bishop or priest to say his Mass 
in my parlor. At leavst three times Father Don- 
nelly favored us with Divine Services. I recall he 
always brought one of his nephews to serve his 
Mass. 

From his arrival. Father Donnelly accommo- 
dated himself in many ways to the needs of his 
congregation. He preached a sermon in English. 
He was quick in picking up a language, and was 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 69 

here only a few Sundays when his knowledge of 
French justified him in delivering a short sermon 
in French. I know that when he came here he 
could not converse in French. But he gave us all 
a surprise one Sunday by saluting a number of 
Osage Indians who stopped over on their way to 
Washington. Several weeks before their arrival 
Father Donnelly learned from his friends, the Jes- 
uit Fathers at Osage, that they were coming. He 
promptly called on the Professor of Indian Lan- 
guage at Shawnee Mission to teach him the Osage 
dialect. He repeated his visits and remained for 
hours every day acquiring enough of the tongue to 
make a talk to the coming Indians. After a ser- 
mon in English he addressed the Indians for fully 
fifteen minutes in the Osage. They were all atten- 
tion while he spoke. They did not seem surprised, 
for Indians never look surprised. After Mass we 
gathered around the twenty or thirty natives and 
asked if they understood Father Donnelly. They 
said, **Yes, he speak Indian." The white man, the 
government agent, told us that Father Donnelly 
made himself thoroughly understood. He continued 
his lessons in Indian for a long while afterwards. 
The same Indians, on their way home, were here 
for Sunday and Father Donnelly again addressed 
them in the Osage tongue. 

This is my second venture in newspaper lines. 
I pray kind indulgence. 

MRS. DILLON. 



CHAPTER VII. 

FATHER DONNELLY GIVES UP THE INDE- 
PENDENCE PARISH, 1857. 

"^^^^^HE dedication of the Kansas City brick 
m C\ church was still fresh in Father Donnelly's 
^ J recollection and he was in his home at 
^^^ Independence when a priest named Father 
Denis Kennedy made his appearance and announced 
himself pastor of Kansas City. If Father Donnelly 
ever had a nerve he must have turned it off as one 
turns off an electric light. With extended hand 
and a friendly smile playing on his face, he con- 
gratulated and welcomed the brother priest, and 
to continue what he considered the pleasantry, he 
complimented him and said, *'By the way, there's 
not a priest in the diocese that would not be hon- 
ored by such a promotion." When the visitor was 
seated Father Donnelly asked him when he had 
arrived, and had he come by way of Kansas City. 
"Well, Father Donnelly," he replied, ''I came by 
boat to Kansas City yesterday, and I propose to 
return on the first eastbound packet. Here is my 
letter of appointment." Father Donnelly read the 
letter, witn the ease and self-control of a man who 
was receiving commonplace news. He said : ^'Father 
Kennedy, do not go away. You surely have been 
promoted. Where you have come has a great fu- 
ture and a good-sized congregation. Central Town- 
ship, where you were, will never be big enough 
to act as tail to the kite of St. Louis. Besides, it 
will not advance your standing with your arch- 
bishop to show the white feather now. What is 
the matter? Why do you refuse Kansas City?" 
**I learn," said the priest, ''there is a debt on the 
parish and I will never undertake to pay a debt 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 71 

made by another." "Well," said Father Donnelly, 
*'I do not want you to go away. Would you take 
a parish out here, without a cent of debt, and with 
church, school, and property of several acres, and 
a cemetery? If you say yes, I'll give you Inde- 
pendence and go mj^self to Kansas City and pay 
off that small debt." Father Kennedy assented 
and remained as guest with Father Donnelly until 
a response from a letter to Archbishop Kenrick 
arrived. The archbishop replied, ''I am satisfied 
with the arrangement between Fathers Donnelly 
and Kennedy, and hereby make the appointments 
of Father Donnelly to be resident pastor of Kan- 
sas City and Father Kennedy resident pastor of 
Independence." Father Donnelly left within a few 
hours for his home in Kansas City. He carried 
with him a satchel containing absolute necessities, 
and a few days afterwards removed his library 
and wearing apparel. Father Donnelly, having a 
keen business sense, realized he got the better in 
the transaction and for that he thanked God and 
his own shrewdness. 

Father Denis Kennedy was a worthy successor 
at Independence. He was gifted with the true 
missionary spirit of Father Donnelly. His health 
was rugged and he never tired, following Father 
Donnelly's long journeys on horseback in search 
of the scattered members of the fold of Christ. 
During the bushwhacking and guerilla raids by 
independent bands of southern cavalry, and the 
counterraids of what was called the Jennison Jay- 
hawkers from Kansas into Jackson County, Father 
Kennedj^'s services were kindly recognized by the 
contending forces. He was frequently sent for by 
both sides to administer to the wounded and the 
dying. One night on his way to one of these calls 
he was suddenly halted and commanded to iden- 
tify himself. He gave his name and place of resi- 



72 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

dence. The outlaw troop had never heard of him. 
When he said he was a priest they immediately 
connected him with some spies and detectives who 
in the garb of ministers of the Gospel were sent to 
ferret out the hiding places of Quantrill and his 
daring aide-de-camp, Jesse James. They refused 
to heed his pleas and ordered him to dismount. 
He was led to a convenient tree to be shot. Western 
outlaws always prefer to kill a victim when he has 
the support of a tree. When the three sharpshoot- 
ers who did the executions were moving to the 
usual thirty paces in front, a soldier sleeping near- 
by on the ground suddenly awoke. As he sat up 
his eyes fell on the condemned man. The first 
glance convinced him he knew the prisoner, and 
the second look made him shout: ''Boys, don't 
shoot. That's a man who harbored me and 
Brother Frank in his house in Independence when 
we were wounded by the Jennison fiends. That's 
Father Kennedy, a Catholic priest." The execu- 
tioners lowered their guns. It was Jesse James 
who had spoken. He rushed to Father Kennedy 
and asked where he was going. "To visit a dying 
man," replied the priest. "I thought so," said Jesse, 
"you're always good to the sick and wounded and 
the dying. I'll escort you. Father, and that fellow 
that ordered you shot will go along, too. That's 
Bill Sheppard, a pretty bad fellow, but he isn't 
afraid of anything or anybody. Come on, Bill!" 
ordered the superior officer, Jesse James. They 
rode side by side of the priest to the home of the 
dying Catholic. They then saw Father Kennedy to 
his door in Independence. This story was fre- 
quently told by Father Kennedy after the war. 
Two of Father Kennedy's parishioners became as- 
sociated with the Quantrill guerilla band, as they 
were called, and in an interview with the reporter 
of a Kansas City evening paper, said they heard 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 73 

the occurrence related by those who were with 
Jesse on the night that Father Kennedy had the 
close call. Father Kennedy was transferred to 
Hannibal, Missouri, in 1871, and before he died 
purchased the church erected by the Congre- 
gationalists at Hannibal immediately before the 
Civil War. It is one of the largest and finest 
church edifices in Missouri. Its cost price when 
labor and material were low was $70,000.00. 

Father Kennedy's successors at Independence 
were Father O'Neill, Father Kennedy's predeces- 
sor at Hannibal, Father E. J. Shea, a brilliant and 
hard working priest, then first assistant to Bishop 
Ryan at St. John's Church, St. Louis, who was 
appointed pastor when Father O'Neill resigned to 
join the diocese of Chicago. But Father Shea de- 
clined the proffer. Father T. Fitzgerald then be- 
came pastor of Independence where he continued 
until his death in 1910. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
COLONIZER AND ENTHUSIAST. 



E 



'ATHER DONNELLY quickly cleared off 
the few thousand dollars' indebtedness on 
the new Immaculate Conception Church. 
The Kansas City parish did not long 
confine the labors of Father Donnelly. Shortly 
after leaving Independence he received orders to 
attend as outmission the city of Liberty, which 
meant all Clay County. This new charge, after 
two years, was transferred to the pastor of Inde- 
pendence. Bishop Miege in 1857 requested Father 
Donnelly to take care of the handful of Catholics 
a few miles across the Kaw in the Kanzas Terri- 
tory. While doing this service for his friend he 
induced some very desirable Irish families recently 
from his own county in Ireland to buy farms in 
Kansas on the road leading to Leavenworth. This 
settlement was fortunate in following his advice. 
Their farms were very productive and the pur- 
chasers were practical, industrious farmers. Some 
few, however, never got over their lonesomeness 
for their old country and were constantly finding 
fault and regretting their investment. Father 
Donnelly was always solicitous for his countrymen 
and aided them in selecting good locations. His 
choice was the farming lands. ''The only trade 
you ever followed at home was farming. Go to the 
farms," he would say. "The temptations of the 
cities are great, and too many of you are yielding 
to them." After his experience with the few dis- 
contented ones in Kansas he ever afterwards was 
slow to point out any particular place for future 
homes except within his own parish lines. 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 75 

Father Donnelly's many letters to eastern 
newspapers made his name well known in New 
York and Boston. The name of the Kansas settle- 
ment was the one usually given every locality en- 
tered by Irishmen. It was called ''Irish Settle- 
ment." That name may be frequently found in the 
church directories of the '40s and '50s. For in- 
stance, in the Directory of 1849 the Jesuit mission- 
aries from St. Mary's claim a mission called Irish 
Settlement, but its whereabouts is not printed. No 
doubt there was such a place which the Fathers 
attended. The U. S. Post Office did not in those 
early days have the right of giving the names to 
new settlements, or at least did not exercise it. 
Chaos is the primitive condition in new countries 
and it requires time and the strain of many incon- 
veniences to install the order of civilization. 

The many letters to New York and Boston 
newspapers made his name well known also along 
the Atlantic Coast. His mail was unusually large 
as a result. To the mechanic he would say: ''Stay 
where the factories are, go to work at wTiat you 
know best. Farming is not a slipshod undertak- 
ing. A farmer must know the soil and be able to 
till it. Farming is a science, it is an industry that 
requires experience, brains, steady habits, a strong 
heart ready to meet success without having one's 
head turned, able to surmount the uncertainties 
that come with weather, drought, and insects, flies 
and grasshoppers. A farmer must be studious, 
learning every new method and agricultural in- 
vention and being quick in using them. He must 
be sober and never get tired. Don't come to the 
western prairies unless you are ready and willing 
to labor in sunshine and storm, in failure and suc- 
cess. The farmer must be an early riser and con- 
serve nature by going to bed early. If you are 
ready to accept all these conditions, come west; 



76 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

and there are many more chances of success than 
there are dangers of failure." 

The Boston Pilot had a large circulation 
among the Irish in America. It was extensively 
read in Ireland also. It had many readers among 
the priests there. Father Donnelly frequently re- 
ceived letters from the Irish parish priests in rela- 
tion to homes for their own immediate families 
and their parishioners contemplating coming to 
America. The result was that a number of the 
Irish immigrants of the '50s and '60s took up farms 
in Jackson and surrounding counties of Missouri. 
Farm land was cheap, and when guided by Father 
Donnelly's advice they invariably succeeded. At this 
day it is not unusual to find the offspring of those 
pioneers in possession of the original farms with 
enlarged area, satisfied with conditions and hold- 
ing sacred the memory of the priest who induced 
their fathers and grandfathers to acquire western 
homes. Before Father Donnelly retired from In- 
dependence, many of his countrypeople were suc- 
cessful businessmen and rich contractors. Many, 
very many, Catholics who amassed fortunes in 
Kansas City were free to say they owed their start 
and their continued success to the advice and some- 
times the help they received from Father Donnelly, 
or through his influence. 

From the very day of his arrival all through 
his thirty-five years as priest he saw a great future 
for Kansas City. When it became the gateway for 
the thousands going West to open up a trade with 
Mexico by the Santa Fe Trail, when he beheld 
armies of fortune-seekers wild with the lust of 
gold in far-off California in 1849, and troopers of 
the get-rich-quick, leaving farms, machine shops 
and banks in the quest of the same rich metal at 
Pike's Peak in 1859, when he saw young men from 
colleges and universities of Massachusetts and 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 77 

New York coining to the Kansas prairies and towns 
to grow up and grow great, like Senator Ingalls, 
in the West, he would repeat with pleasure his be- 
lief in the future of his city. ''Everyone who passes 
through will speak of the natural advantages of 
the city geographically. Coming or going, the 
western traveler must pass through Kansas City. 
The very center of the United States,* by mathe- 
matical calculation and by the help of the compass, 
is within a very few miles of our city. All roads 
led to Rome — it was the center of the Old World. 
All roads must and do lead to Kansas City, the 
geographical center and the coming business cen- 
ter of our country." Newspapers, magazines and 
illustrated journals were writing up Kansas City, 
the town that ushers you into the vast plains and 
the home of the buffaloes. Every arrival left at 
least some money there and joined in the predic- 
tion that Kansas City had a great future. From 
every boat a few would stop off to make their 
homes there. Poets and artists would get off the 
boats to purchase food and tents for a stay on the 
prairies. From Kansas City through Kansas the 
vast rolling plains were called prairies. The geog- 
raphies in the schools and the metropolitan news- 
papers always said ''deserts." There was the great 
American desert unfolding itself in gentle undu- 
lations and rising in altitude until it reached the 
grade of 9,000 feet above the ocean, where it lost 
its identity in the foothills of the Rocky Moun- 
tains. The literary invaders to the land of the 
cactus and buffalo-grass and sand entered with the 
popular idea of the desert. But the popular idea 
was unlike the thing itself. 

*The geographical center of the United States is on a 
farm ten miles north of Smith Center, Kansas. 



78 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

The ground was bare and sometimes level, 
but frequently diversified with hills and valleys. 
Its sandy bareness, except for occasional tufts of 
grass that were bristling and brittle, and the ef- 
fect of sun and cloud, heat and distance, resulted 
in a perpetual shifting and varying color. By this 
play of air and sky, its primary tones of red, yel- 
low, blue, dazzling white and dazzling black, were 
constantly changing into hazes, transparencies, 
lights and shadows of infinite variety and beauty. 
It was never monotonous because it was never 
twice the same. This was Nature at its very best, 
before commerce built its roads of steel from Kan- 
sas Citj^ to the Eockies. This was Nature as the 
poet and artist saw it before civilization dotted it 
with human habitations and lined it with macadam 
and asphalt passways. This was the way Nature 
painted its own canvas, stretching from Missouri 
to the sublime Rockies. Poets raved over a beauty 
and sublimity they never saw before and never 
dreamed of. Kansas City was alive to the oppor- 
tunities of such a scenic display at its very doors. 
The literary artist was busy wifh circulars and 
handbooks for the East and South, and for the 
professional traveler and hunter from England, 
whose vacations up to that time had been spent in 
shooting the wild beasts of Asia and Africa. Every 
scheme to advertise the promising future of Kansas 
City was used by the city council and the citizens. 
Mr. C. C. Spaulding, a young newspaperman and 
civil engineer, in December, 1857, published a book 
of about 150 pages showing the natural advan- 
tages of Kansas City and giving a short history of 
the town and the enterprise of its merchants. 
Copies were handed the passengers on steam- 
boats as they landed at the wharf. The boats 
gave ample time for the passengers to view the 
city, and when sightseeing was over a sumptuous 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 79 

banquet was spread in the hotel on the levee front. 
All this kindness and hospitality had its results. 
Some of the passersby made investments in real 
estate before leaving, others afterwards, and all 
remembered and told others of their favorable im- 
pressions of the city. The stir at the wharf, the 
large amounts of incoming and outgoing freight, 
the oxen trains on the levee loading and unloading, 
all presaged a coming metropolis. The commer- 
cial standing of Kansas City became a subject dis- 
cussed from the source of the Missouri down to 
St. Louis and off to the far East. Never even in 
its many boom days of the '70s and '90s, did Kan- 
sas City attract such attention. Its growth looked 
substantial, new buildings were going up, business 
houses increased, and the limits of its city lines 
were outgrown. 




CHAPTER IX. 

CIVIL WAR DAYS AND THE BURIED 
TREASURE. 



DARK portentous cloud was soon observed 
in the east and south. The financial de- 
pression of 1857 was but a light visita- 
tion compared with the threatened disrup- 
tion of the Union of the States. Civil war had 
been hinted and seemed imminent. The burning 
question of slavery could not be settled in the legis- 
lative halls at Washington. It was thought for 
some time that a compromise had been effected by 
the drawing of the Mason and Dixon line. All 
south of that line would continue to recognize slav- 
ery of the colored race. North of that line white 
and black would be free citizens. The question of 
admitting the Territory of Kansas into the sister- 
hood of states swelled the slavery issue into a 
heated discussion and soon into threats of disunion 
and war. A new political party came into exist- 
ence and made its first appeal for extinction of 
slavery in the presidential campaign of 1856. It 
was defeated at the polls. Its candidate was Gen- 
eral Fremont. It was the Abolition Party. Defeat 
only aroused a determination to force its principle 
by war measures. The new state was to be the 
field of contention, no matter what the nature of 
that contention. Young and determined "Free 
Statesmen" came in numbers from Boston, Brook- 
lyn and the New England States, and bought lands 
and went into the cities of Kansas along the Mis- 
souri River and built up towns in the interior of 
the Territory. They published newspapers and 
made speeches in the little settlements, demanding 
that slavery be kept out of the coming state. 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 81 

Strange to say, many of the most ardent advocates 
of making Kansas a Free State were people living 
in Kansas but natives of Southern states. They 
wanted no slaves in the free atmosphere of their 
new home. Missouri was for slavery and its 
spread. Each side brought forward its most vio- 
lent if not its ablest orators. Threats followed 
intemperate speeches. Violence and bloodshed with 
armed invasions into Missouri and back again into 
Kansas were frequent. John Brown was driven 
from the West. He renewed his efforts of forcibly 
wiping out slavery in the State of Virginia. He 
was captured by the militia of Virginia and was 
hanged. 

The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 was 
soon followed by civil war. The whole nation was 
paralyzed for four j^ears. Missouri was the seat 
of war during all those terrible years. St. Louis 
was under martial law and so was Kansas City. 

Jackson County from the admission of Kanzas 
Territory into the Union of States, and all during 
the Civil War, was a storm center for Unionists 
and Secessionists. General Ewing's ''Order No. 
11" devastated nearly all the county from Inde- 
pendence south, east and west. Many of the in- 
habitants were ordered south of the Mason and 
Dixon line, and many fought with the North and 
the South in the armies. The county was almost 
depopulated, and Kansas City and Independence 
fell off in population. The sale of army supplies 
was the only business transacted. 

The Battle of Westport was waged from Oc- 
tober 21st to 23rd, 1864. This made Kansas City 
a battlefield. The citizens were divided on the 
issues of the day, and were fighting under Gen- 
erals Price and Curtis during those three days. 
Father Donnelly's parishioners and friends were 
on both sides. He was personally acquainted with 



82 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

the commanders. The first sound of the clash of 
arms found him on the battlefield to give his 
priestly services wherever needed. He helped as 
nurse to bandage the wounds and stanch the blood 
of the fallen and helped to carry the stricken to 
places of security. He heard confessions and pre- 
pared the wounded for death, and whispered con- 
solation to the dying; he removed the dead, and 
in the darkness of the night dug trenches in which 
to bury them. When Price retreated southward 
he directed the removal of the wounded to im- 
provised hospitals in the deserted buildings in West- 
port and Kansas City. For several long weeks he 
gave every moment of his time except while say- 
ing Mass to this work of charity. All business 
had ceased and Kansas City seemed deserted ex- 
cept for the work of physicians and undertakers. 
Father Donnelly had been a leader in the days of 
Kansas City's progress; now in the night of its 
affliction he was its consolation and its closest 
friend. People looked to him as to a father. When 
angry contention was inflaming men's passions to 
war no man could say he took side either way. 
Whatever were his sentiments he hid them in the 
secrets of his soul. He voted at every election, 
but never attended any political meetings during 
that time. He saw that war was inevitable. His 
constant prayer was that this land of freedom and 
happiness would survive the shock of bloody con- 
flict and emerge a stronger nation and a more 
brotherly family. His services at the Battle of 
Westport were thanked in the military orders of 
the two commanding generals. 

On the eve of the Battle of Westport in the 
fall of '64 panic was in the air. Sterling Price 
of the Confederate Army had won a victory over 
the Union troops under Mulligan at Lexington in 
September, 1861, and now rumors of his approach 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 83 

to attack Kansas City and Westport flew thick and 
fast. Before leaving Lexington, it was learned, 
Price had seized on the funds in the local banks 
and the fear was widespread that he would do the 
same thing when he reached Kansas City. There 
was a rush on the banks, accounts were checked 
out by hundreds of people and the money taken to 
their homes and concealed in various places. Then 
the thought occurred to many of them that perhaps 
their homes would be looted, and they began to 
look about for more secure hiding places. At that 
time Father Donnelly was Kansas City's "Vicar 
of Wakefield," known and trusted by everybody, 
Catholics and Protestants alike. He was known 
to be an old acquaintance of many of the Confed- 
erate leaders, and a friend of General Price, per- 
sonally known and respected by his soldiers as well. 
It was known that previous to his coming to Mis- 
souri, his life, after leaving Ireland, had been spent 
largely near the Mason and Dixon line. He had 
been an Irish patriot in the homeland, and that 
meant a rebel. So the belief grew that Father 
Donnelly would be one man that would be immune 
from search by the invading army and the one 
man who could be trusted to conceal securely the 
threatened funds. The afternoon before the Battle 
of Westport hundreds of his own countrymen and 
church members, as well as a large number of 
others, came singly and in twos and threes up 
through the trees and ravine adjoining the pastor's 
residence and church, bringing money in cans and 
jars and purses, and asking Father Donnelly to 
take care of it for them until the trouble was over. 
They felt certain that Price would not molest him. 
They knew that his ministrations as priest would 
be in demand for the dying and the wounded of 
both armies and that his person and his property 



84 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

would be held sacred by even the worst of the 
marauders. 

He often told that he had shrunk at first from 
the great responsibility thrust upon him as care- 
taker of other people's money in those troublous 
times, that he tried to convince the people that 
war was no respecter of persons when army needs 
were pressing, and that a contingency might arise 
in which he would be no more immune than the 
rest of them. But they would not listen to him. 
The women wept and the men pleaded, and he 
finally yielded to their wishes. They came like so 
many depositors to a bank. He opened up a mem- 
orandum book. He entered names and amounts. 
The darkness of the evening was growing. His 
only light was from one small candle which threw 
a fitful glimmer around the room. He had been 
a schoolmaster before he became a priest and the 
methodical habits of his teaching days clung to 
him. He wrote out carefully and stopDed fre- 
quently to read over the names, to see if he had 
spelled them right. The waiting crowd grew nerv- 
ous and restless. Price was at the edge of town, 
he might be at their doors in a few hours. Many 
of the women, anxious to get back to their homes 
and little ones, threw their pocketbooks on the 
table, simply saying: "Here, Father Donnelly, 
there are so many dollars there. You know our 
names and where we live. Put it away for us. We 
must oret back home." 

When the crowd had finallv departed. Father 
Donnelly said, there were bundles of money left 
there without any name attached and impossible of 
identification by memory of the words or faces of 
those who left them. The reader may judge what 
an unbusinesslike jumble it all was for both priest 
and people. But they were in the midst of the 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 85 

panic and terror of war and heads were not cool. 
It was a choice of saving or losing all, they thought. 

When left to himself, Father Donnelly was 
shocked by his foolhardiness. A thousand misgiv- 
ings went through his mind. How would he get 
the money out of harm's way? Where would he 
find a secure hiding place? Then the thought came 
to him: "Dead men rest untouched in the grave- 
yard; I will bury the people's money in the cem- 
etery." The cemetery was two blocks west of his 
residence on Broadway. It ran along Pennsylvania 
Avenue from Twelfth to Eleventh Streets on the 
east, and west about 150 feet from what is now 
the west line of Jefferson Street. The gravedigger 
lived nearby. Carrying the money in a large 
wooden box. Father Donnelly went in the black 
night to the sexton's home, called him and told him 
to get a wheelbarrow, a spade, and a broom. To- 
gether they entered the graveyard and soon found 
a plot of grass growing in a pathway. The sod was 
carefully removed and a hole dug in which the box 
was buried. Then the sod was replaced and the 
loose dirt carefully swept away. 

That very night word came to Father Donnelly 
that Tom, the old sexton, under the influence of a 
few drinks, had divulged the secret to a crowd in 
a saloon at Main and Eighth Streets. After a 
hurried consultation, four trusty men, armed with 
shotguns and led by Father Donnelly, went to the 
cemetery, dug up the treasure and buried it anew 
back of the little brick church. After the guard 
retired the priest began worrying about the secur- 
ity of his new hiding place, and before daylight 
went out alone, with no prying eyes and no one to 
be burdened with the temptation of his confidence, 
dug up the box a second time and gave it another 
burial in a remote spot some distance north of its 
second hiding place, pacing the distance between 



86 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

them and marking down, as he thought, the accu- 
rate measurements and landmarks of the new de- 
pository. 

The Battle of Westport came on. The three 
days that the battle was waged from the Kansas 
State line through Westport toward what is now 
Swope Park were busy days for Father Donnelly. 
His good offices as priest and nurse were in con- 
stant demand. The dead and dying filled the homes 
all along the countryside adjacent to the battle- 
ground. When Price retired south the priest re- 
turned to continue his Samaritan work in the im- 
provised hospitals of the city. It was fully a 
month before he was able to resume his duties in 
the church. When he was able to return to his 
own house his first thought was of the buried 
treasure. It seemed best to him to transfer the box 
to his house and call upon the owners to come and 
get their money. Taking a spade he went out under 
cover of night and dug in the spot where he was 
sure the box had been hidden. 

An hour's labor brought nothing to light. With 
anxious forebodings he went back and measured the 
paces he had counted from the angle of the church 
and dug again; moved a few feet further and dug 
again; then a few feet northward — but there was 
no box. Daylight found him still fruitlessly dig- 
ging. The next night was a repetition of the pre- 
vious one, followed by the startling conviction that 
he had hidden too well or someone had spied too 
keenly. The box was never found. 

Father Donnelly, when he had abandoned all 
hope of recovering the buried money, went to a 
friendly banker, made an estimate of the sums that 
had been placed in his hands, and borrowed the 
money necessary to repay them, giving a mortgage 
on some farm lands as security. As the claims 
were presented he paid them off. 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly • 87 

Ten years afterwards Father Donnelly was 
stricken with fever. There was no hospital here 
then and no professional nurses. He was cared 
for by his aged sister and two nieces in his home, 
and the good Sisters of St. Teresa's Academy lent 
their aid. One night he seemed much improved 
and his relatives and the Sisters felt that he could 
pass the night without attendants. He had told 
them so and begged them to go to their homes. 
Early the next morning the Sisters went to his 
door, found it open, and the patient gone. An alarm 
was spread and after some time spent in anxious 
search the venerable priest was found, in sparse at- 
tire, digging in the graveyard. In his delirium he 
had fancied that the lost treasure had been moved 
back to its first hiding place. 

Again a few years, and Father Donnelly was 
himself carried to the cemetery and like the wooden 
box in his enforced trust, some time later he was 
taken up and buried in another grave in the base- 
ment of the then new cathedral, where, "After 
life's fitful fever he sleeps well." To the last days 
of his life the buried treasure was on his mind. Its 
disappearance was a mystery that has never been 
explained. Whether in the excitement of the times 
he had forgotten the real hiding place, or whether 
someone else discovered it and removed the box 
during his absence, was never known. If it still 
remained in the earth perhaps by this time it has 
moldered into dust, or perhaps some digger's spade- 
ful of earth will yet reveal the secret. 




CHAPTER X. 
RECONSTRUCTION DAYS. 



'ANSAS CITY seemed for a while to have 
lost its very life. Many of its citizens were 
wounded, dying, or dead, or still fighting 
in the closing days of the war. Peace 
brought home the soldiers of the North and the 
South. Angry feelings soon subsided. An old 
ambition was revived, an old rivalry was aroused, 
the cry of peaceful days was taken up and went 
from mouth to mouth : ''Let us make Kansas City 
a great city!" Meetings were called. The object 
was Kansas City's good. Father Donnelly could 
be seen at every meeting. He joined in the dis- 
cussions and cordially seconded every good 
scheme. Kansas City's population of from six to 
eight thousands before the war was down now in 
the hundreds. The rival cities all had suffered 
from the war, but none so much as Kansas City. 
War had entered Kansas City's gates — the other 
cities only felt its shock. Every city on the north 
turn of the Missouri River was striving for the 
same result — supremacy on its banks. Kansas 
City held that position before war days. She had 
been the Gate of Entry. Supremacy now would be- 
long to the first city bringing an eastern railroad 
into its limits and then forcing that railroad over 
the river to the mountains and to the Pacific 
Ocean. Railroads were becoming the means of 
travel and the way of transportation — quick transit 
for man and freight. Steamboats were slow in 
comparison. Kansas City business men — ^there 
were no capitalists then nearer than St. Louis, New 
York or Boston — had lost their savings of years of 
industry; the few men who had valuable property 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 89 

had lost it or could hardly be called owners be- 
cause of mortgages and taxes. St. Joseph still held 
its solid citizens. Atchison was ambitious for as- 
cendency and was backed by aspiring, eastern- 
spirited people in Kansas. Leavenworth was the 
trading post for the army and wealth increased 
there during the war because of the government's 
fort and its patronage. Weston was a steady town 
secured by its judicious, saving German citizens. 
"A bridge across the river," was the slogan. Meet- 
ings were held in all these towns and after much 
enthusiasm adjourned to create further sentiment 
and to reach the approval and help of everyone in 
the respective neighborhoods. Kansas City was 
just breathing — resuscitation had hardly taken 
place. Eastern newspapers were joking about the 
fight of the Missouri River towns to build a bridge. 
Kansas City's name was never mentioned among 
the rivals. 

On winter nights in 1867, Father Donnelly used 
to relate, a few old chums would frequently meet 
in the back room of the little rented Postoffice 
near the river, to laugh and joke over the contest 
for the bridge in other cities, doing their usual 
guessing and well wishing. As the pleasantries 
subsided one of those present cried out: ''What 
about Kansas City's getting into the fight?" A 
guffaw laugh followed. Then an interchange of 
hospitality. Then the question was renewed. The 
fun in the question gradually abated. Kansas 
City's contempt for its northern neighbors and 
rivals seemed to grow in the little gathering. No 
arguments followed. Kansas City in the past when 
it meant anything never thought of discussion — 
it simply saw and did the thing. '*We can get all 
the money needed; we are not poor. Our banks 
will back up their customers. Let us get going." 
Checks were drawn out. Everyone present was 



90 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

a committee to arouse the bankers. Horses were 
mounted and every man with money within a 
radius of ten miles was ordered out of bed. When 
the second morning cast its light, reports were 
nearly all handed in at the rendezvous. The 
bankers accepted the checks and drew up orders 
on their eastern correspondents. The amount de- 
manded to insure the bridge was on hand. Before 
noon four of Kansas City's enterprising citizens 
had started for the nearest railroad, miles east. 
When they presented themselves in the general 
office of the railroad interests away off in Boston 
they handed their certified checks from Kansas City 
banks to the capitalists who owned the North Mis- 
souri Railroad, now the Wabash Railroad. Those 
checks were large enough to justify bringing the 
railroad from Cameron Junction to what is now 
North Kansas City, then Harlem, and to meet the 
bonus for the bridge. On July 4th, 1869, the com- 
pletion of the bridge was celebrated. St. Louis 
sent two dozen cars crowded with its best citizens, 
headed by the mayor and common council. The 
best of feeling was exhibited by the rival river 
cities in the hundreds of people present from St. 
Joseph, Weston, Atchison and Leavenworth. Kan- 
sas City's supremacy was admitted and Kansas 
City's hospitality was in keeping with its conquer- 
ing greatness. 

Father Donnelly spent days on horseback 
soliciting additional subscriptions for the bridge 
among his old neighbors in Jackson County. On 
the day of the celebration he figured on the vari- 
ous committees. War was over, its rancour had 
dissipated, Kansas City was established as a fix- 
ture. No man was happier than the patriotic 
priest. 

Colonel Van Horn, owner and editor of the 
Kansas City Journal and one of Kansas City's best 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 91 

and most loyal citizens, is authority for the state- 
ment that Kansas City had fallen in population 
from 6000 to less than 1000 in 1865. The United 
States census of 1870 showed it a city of 32,000. 
Its growth went on. 

The failure of Jay Cook in 1873 brought on a 
commercial collapse that passed from Boston and 
New York to San Francisco. Kansas City scarcely 
felt the shock. Three of its strongest local banks 
failed in 1874 and 1875. Grasshoppers swept the 
state of Kansas, its tributary and mainstay, of 
every blade of grass and every vestige of corn, 
wheat, oats and vegetables in 1874. A dishonesty 
in the city's finances amounting to some hundreds 
of thousands of dollars forced an issue of script 
that was accepted outside the city at less than 
twenty cents on the dollar. Inside of one year it 
was everywhere accepted at its face value. Three 
wild real estate booms brought their natural result. 
Yet Kansas City grew and its population in 1880 
was more than fifty thousand. 



CHAPTER XL 
FATHER DONNELLY A MISSIONARY. 



E 



•ATHER DONNELLY was resident pastor 
of Independence from 1845 to 1857. His 
headquarters and his home were there. 
His assignment was not confined to the 
httle village of the Kaw — Kaw Town, or the town 
of Kanzas. He was instructed to traverse at 
least once a year all that part of southwest Mis- 
souri from Kansas on the west to the lines of the 
Lexington parish on the east, and south to the 
Arkansas state line. As the reader stops in amaze- 
ment at the little world Father Donnelly was to 
traverse, it should not be overlooked that this is 
the same Father Donnelly who a few days before 
he came to this expansive charge made his first 
trial at horseback riding on his way from St. Louis 
to Old Mines. The reverend Father was not an 
enthusiastic youth full of dreams of sure victory 
and impossible defeat. "There lies my mission,'* 
sprang to his mind, but the poetic temperament, if 
ever his, was not his to make conclusion with "and 
I'll make it a garden of ease and pleasure." The 
new pastor had bade farewell to more than forty 
years of a struggling life. When he painted a 
dream picture he went to the realistic style. Here 
was a field of labor covering over 20,000 square 
miles. The examples of early missionaries in the 
Illinois country, along the lakes and in the far 
Northwest, and along the Missouri River and south 
into Texas, were indeed encouraging. "If those 
could do such deeds why cannot I?" The real red- 
blooded Irishman never takes a dare and when the 
seasons favorable for traveling came Father Don- 
nelly was on his Indian pony. He had mastered 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 93 

the horse as he had mastered many an awkward and 
stubborn difficulty. Three different times in his 
twelve years at Independence he went southeast 
and west wherever he knew there was a Catholic 
and where he thought he could add to the Church by 
a conversion. He touched every excuse of a town 
in his demense — there was not a single hamlet big 
enough to be called a town, by the people, much 
less to be entitled to the name by a legislative re- 
quirement. A number of the Catholics he found 
here and there were cold in faith as in practice. 
Others had intermarried with non-Catholics and had 
joined some of the sects. He preached and said 
Mass in school houses, very few and far between, 
then, in Missouri. On more than one occasion he 
spoke to the "natives" — a popular name and a 
cherished one — in their little rude churches when 
their own religious services were over for the Sun- 
day. Although the times were rife with the pre- 
judices and hatred against "Romanism" consequent 
on the nation-wide spread of "Knownothingism," 
Father Donnelly was happy to say that he received 
an attentive reception wherever he lectured. In In- 
dependence, also, he attended the civic and even 
know-nothing meetings and took part in the discus- 
sions. The kindness he experienced made him ever 
afterwards extol the American sense of fairplay. 

He studied the real American character and 
became convinced it compared favorably with the 
best he found in the people from other countries. 
They were innocent of the world's worst. Their 
lives were simple. Existence was a struggle. They 
were illiterate because there were no schools in 
the East and South where they sprang from — 
there were no books. The farms they entered were 
small and scarcely productive. Their methods of 
farming were crude in the extreme. The lethargy 
of the hot South was embedded in their every fiber. 



94 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

They were devoid of ambition, they could not go 
higher and they never dreamed of improving their 
condition. They seemed to have no red blood in 
their veins ; their blood was poisoned by the miasma 
from swamps and upturning of hitherto untouched 
soil; their faces were thin and pale. They were a 
race of new aborigines in that they had the wan- 
dering spirit and the listlessness of the Indian. 
They had his readiness to resent an injury or an 
insult, they had his long-sightedness and quickness 
of vision; they could bring down the fleetest bird 
and would face the fiercest animal that prowled 
the sandy plains or rugged mountains. The pass- 
ing stranger was ever welcome to their frugal meal 
and invited to partake of their hospitality. 

The visits Father Donnelly made these people 
resulted in a few conversions, and he felt his time 
well spent as he recorded that some fallen-away 
Catholics and their families came back to the Faith. 
During his absence from Independence his kind 
friends and predecessors on the mission at Kansas 
City and Independence, the Jesuit Fathers who 
were in attendance along the Missouri from St. 
Louis, looked after his parish. 

He had just made his third tour, in 1851, to 
the south and east missions when he remembered 
a long-promised visit he owed his old friend Father 
Hammil at Lexington. Before going to his friend's 
home he stopped at the village hotel to secure stable 
and feed for his horse. The weather was intensely 
cold. The cheerful fire in the hotel office invited 
him to take the chill out of hands and feet and 
body. The office was filled with men who were 
listening with close attention to a man who was 
telling about a marriage ceremony he had wit- 
nessed a few days before in a Catholic church at 
Independence. The richest man perhaps west of 
St. Louis was married by the priest of Independ- 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 95 

ence to a young lady named Ann Eliza Keane, 
scarcely seventeen years of age. The groom was 
fully eighty years old. The news was so unex- 
pected and the event seemed so unusual that men 
expressed their doubts and thought the narrator 
was just making up as he went along. "But, I tell 
you," the man would say, '*I was there, I saw it, 
and I saw the old gray-headed priest of Independ- 
ence performing the ceremony." Father Donnelly 
was the priest of Independence and he was gray- 
headed, but he knew there must be a mistake for 
he had not performed that ceremony, he had not 
been at Independence for nearly six weeks. He 
could no longer restrain himself, and in loud tones 
interrupted the speaker: ''I am the priest of Inde- 
pendence and I know nothing about such an occur- 
rence." '*I don't care who you are, my dear sir, 
I assure you I saw it all as I have said. I know 
Mr. Jabez B. Smith and I am acquainted with the 
bride and her family." It was too much for Father 
Donnelly. He forgot all about his contemplated 
visit and went at once to the stable where he de- 
layed just long enough to give his poor pony time 
to finish his oats and hay. He then turned the 
horse towards Independence. **Jabez Smith, my 
parishioner and old friend, married to that dear 
little child of my flock? Impossible! Not to be 
believed!" When late the next day he reached 
Independence, he did not have to inquire; people 
stopped in the street to tell him about the mar- 
riage. It was a surprise that made people forget 
all the gossip and all the news of the day. He 
was told that Father Murphy, the pastor of St. 
Joseph, Missouri, had been telegraphed for and 
came to perform the ceremony. The newspaper 
stories about the marriage were lying on his desk. 
"And that both parties should have kept the mar- 
riage a secret from me!" If often happens that 



96 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

the hardest part of a bad story is kept for the end 
of the narrative. Father Donnelly had to hear the 
same finale from every narrator: ''And just to 
think of it, Father Donnelly, Mr. J. Smith gave 
the stranger priest one hundred dollars !" ''Did the 
St. Joseph priest leave that money here for me?" 
he inquired from his domestic. "Why, no. Father; 
he showed it to everyone; it v^as one hundred dol- 
lars in twenty-dollar gold pieces." 

Time cures many wounds, but not in this in- 
stance. The pain rankled in his breast twenty 
years afterwards as he would recount the affair. 
One hundred dollars seems today a trifle to worry 
about. But in 1851 one hundred dollars in gold 
was equal to a thousand dollars in bank notes and 
in purchasing value. The money the laborer, the 
mechanic and the merchant handled was known as 
wild cat currency and was issued by the banks. It 
was worth its face value one day and the next day 
the failure of the bank that issued it made it 
worthless. Every little town had a bank or two, 
and the banks, to the extent of the subscribed and 
sometimes paid-up stock, sent forth paper bills 
frequently greater in amounts than the banks had 
stock or cash or credit. The result was bank col- 
lapses every little while. To protect themselves in 
handling the paper currency the merchants sub- 
scribed for and had on their desks a paper called 
the Director, published every week in the larger 
cities and containing the names of the banks fail- 
ing over the country. Father Donnelly had filed 
away a number of paper bills which he had ac- 
cepted during those days. On their face they 
amounted to several hundred dollars; in fact, they 
were valueless. Now comes an opportunity to be 
enriched with $100 in real money; but he was 
away from home. Another clergyman had bene- 
fited by the absence. When Father Donnelly wrote 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 97 

him to return the money, the answer came, "The 
laborer is worthy of his hire. The distance back 
and forth to perform the ceremony, and many other 
inconveniences, were well worth the offering." "T 
was then a priest about six years," Father Donnelly 
related in after years, ''and all I ever received on 
occasions of baptism and marriages, if all added 
up, would hardly total $100 in currency, much less 
in gold." 



CHAPTER XII. 
CATHOLIC BEGINNINGS AT KANSAS CITY. 



M^^^HE title of Resident Pastor was given 
m (r\ Father Donnelly on the day of his ordina- 
^ J tion when he was assigned to Independ- 
^^^ ence. The title was a recognition of the 
advance of the church on the west boundary of 
the St. Louis diocese. Father Le Roux could 
hardly be named a resident pastor, for that would 
suggest a residence and a fixed class of parish- 
ioners. While at the Kaw he lived with the 
Chouteau family and spent some time at the Chou- 
teau agencies in the Territory. The Catholics near 
the Kaw when Father Le Roux arrived were Cana- 
dians who had come from Trois Rivieres in Canada 
and who claimed Canada for their country and 
home, who came as laboring men in the employ 
of the American, the United States, and the Astor 
Trapping and Fur Companies. Numbers of them 
came to the Kaw. Few of them were married and 
even those few did not stay long. They were river 
wanderers. The small per cent who continued here 
were restless and indifferent to future develop- 
ment. Some bought farms in the west bottoms, 
but nearly all lost them in the flood of 1844. The 
Canadian Catholics who purchased property along 
the bluffs overlooking the Missouri River had In- 
dian blood in their veins or were married to Indian 
women. They could not, they would not, build church, 
schools, or support a pastor. The Chouteaus were 
western Astors on a small scale. St. Louis was 
their business center, and their warehouses were 
nearby, first at Chouteau Landing, east of the site 
of Kansas City, then on the Levee, then in the Ter- 
ritory. You could trace them, for they gave their 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 99 

name to every post and new place they located. 
They were good business men and at least their 
wives were good practical Catholics. Their home 
w^as always open to the priest and their gratuities 
made life bearable for the missionaries. The writer 
sang the Mass and preached at the funeral of the 
original Mrs. Chouteau. 

To the Catholic Banner Father Donnelly on 
March 7th, 1878, wrote the following letter: 

"We are not to suppose that Kansas City when 
first founded could be embellished by fine speci- 
mens of superb architecture; the humble log cabin 
alone afforded shelter and security to its primitive 
inhabitants. The axe, the hammer and the augur 
were almost the only building implements in use. 
The hardy hunters, with their wives, found the 
Chouteau trading post a convenient market for 
their furs and peltry. Many of them settled down 
in the neighborhood and formed with their fam- 
ilies the first Christian congregation on the site of 
Kansas City. About the year 1834 the Reverend 
Benedict Le Roux, a pious and learned French 
priest, was sent from St. Louis as pastor of the 
half-breed congregation at Kansas City. During 
his stay a contract was made with the late James 
Magee — the father of all the Magees — to build a 
log church and parsonage. "Parsonage" was a mis- 
nomer. It was never large enough or conveniently 
enough arranged to be an abode or residence, in any 
sense, for a priest. No one ever thought of even 
finding a night's lodging inside its confined walls. 
Why, people tell me that I lived there; they call 
it Father Donnelly's first parsonage. I have to 
hear this and sometimes read it in the papers, but 
I grew tired long ago denying it. It was even a 
poor shelter in a storm. So-called historians of the 
early days persist in saying the passing Jesuit mis- 
sionaries, and I, in my time, lived there. Whenever 



100 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

I remained here over night from my residence in 
Independence, and when the Jesuits were here for 
a staj^ we always made our home with the Chou- 
teau and Guinotte families. Father Le Roux built 
the lodge or resting house as well as the log church. 
The brick in the chimneys of both church and lodge 
are said to be the first ever manufactured in Kan- 
sas City/' 

He then mentions the names of passing church 
dignitaries who visited Kansas City and Independ- 
ence in the early days, names which are given in 
another part of this volume, after which he pre- 
sents to the readers of the Catholic Banner the 
Right Reverend Bishop Barron, at that time help- 
ing Bishop Kenrick in his large diocese. This 
diocese extended from the Mississippi River, taking 
in almost all Upper Louisiana. About the Right 
Reverend John Barron, Bishop of Liberia, he says: 
"He stayed a month between Kansas City and In- 
dependence, awaiting the arrival of Father Ver- 
reydt, S. J., on his way to the Pottawatomie Mis- 
sion. Bishop Barron accompanied him to the mis- 
sion and returned to Kansas City on the last day 
of the year 1845. On the first day of January, 
1846, I came to Kansas City to see the Bishop. 
He asked me to take a walk. The day was fine. 
The Bishop spoke with enthusiasm of the Indian 
country, describing it as the finest land in the 
world. We proceeded through the woods to the 
edge of the bluffs west of Colonel Coates' present 
mansion. Whilst looking to the west he raised 
both hands above his head and exclaimed: 'No 
government on earth can much longer deter the 
whites from entering that Territory! It is the 
most beautiful country in the whole world. In 
ten years the government will be compelled to pass 
an act opening that country to white settlers. 
When that event takes place (turning his face 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 101 

to the east) you shall have an immense city around 
here.' The act opening Kansas was passed in 1856, 
just ten years afterwards, and now (in 1878) the 
Immense city is actually here ! 

**How did it happen that Kanzas Town had 
such an attraction for travelers of all professions? 
For clergy, traders, trappers, and explorers? The 
answer seems to be, the facilities of travel ren- 
dered by the great rivers as far west as the mouth 
of the Kaw. The railroads lately constructed fol- 
low the same line, and like the rivers, they diverge 
in many directions, making Kansas City a natural 
center; and thus has the prophecy uttered by 
Bishop Barron thirty-three years ago been ful- 
filled." 

The Santa Fe trade, not the influx from Can- 
ada, was the making of Kansas City. No one 
realized this so quickly as Bishop Kenrick. His 
first visit to the church at the Kaw found no priest 
awaiting him. Likely it was not the Sunday for 
the ministrations here of the Jesuit missionaries 
in the Territory. The Bishop advertised his pres- 
ence, baptized some babies and older children in 
the log church, leaving the names of those baptized 
to be "entered in the church registers at West- 
port." There was no church at Westport and there 
were no registers kept there. The paper on which 
the bishop wrote the names of the newly baptized 
looks like the flyleaf torn from an account book. 
It is interesting to know that this leaf is at St. 
Mary's Mission, and the entries made in the only 
register of those days, the one kept by the Jesuit 
Fathers. There never was a church at Westport 
until Father Donnelly in 1866, out of his own 
pocket, purchased from Mr. Jowei Bernard a site 
with an old-fashioned southern home. The Annual 
Church Directory published by Lucas at Phila- 
delphia was placing churches in the St. Louis dio- 



102 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

cese that Bishop Kenrick was unable to locate in 
this first trip to the Kaw or indeed ever after- 
wards. 

In two of the published letters of Father Le 
Roux there is strong evidence that the good Father 
could dream of what was coming. But a Jesuit 
Father while at the Kaw dreamt of what was 
really taking place. He tells of the daily and Sun- 
day services, how the people attended, how they 
gladly formed themselves into sodalities and con- 
fraternities, how they became choir members and 
strung out in processions, how confessions and 
communions grew weekly in numbers. Where did 
these people come from to justify or make pos- 
sible sodalities and confraternities? The zeal of 
this good Father was beyond bounds and so were 
his dreams. If the piety he described ever existed 
here it was never witnessed by any other priest, 
and must have disappeared with the priest who 
recorded it. But "memory" is a very peculiar 
thing. Father Ponziglione, a Jesuit Father at 
Osage Mission, wrote in the early nineties (1893) 
that he recalled a stately church at Westport in 
which he frequently said Mass. It must have been 
a fairy church, for it vanished away, leaving no 
marks upon the real estate records at the county 
seat, and no recollections in the memory of such 
persons as Mr. and Mrs. Dillon, or the early set- 
tlers of Westport surviving in the nineties. Mrs. 
Dillon was the first white girl born in the vicinity 
of Westport. Besides, if Lucas Brothers' Church 
Directory is trustworthy in its date. Father Pon- 
ziglione was in Cincinnati in the year 1849. He 
came to the Territory in 1851. Father Donnelly, 
who was here for six years previous and rode to 
Westport now and then, often mentioned the 
graphic description of how piety flourished under 
the short administration of the passing missionary 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 103 

above referred to. "The Reverend Father," he 
said, "was gifted in many ways : he was very pious 
and rather incHned to dreams. I never found any 
traces of his mission services here, and for his 
civil engineering and map drawing, his imagination 
and not the scene before him, nor his training in 
that science, supplied the sketch." The Jesuit 
Father heralded his dreams broadcast through 
Catholic papers in New York and Philadelphia. 

A little while after Bishop Kenrick's visit, he 
sent Bishop Barron over the diocese to confirm and 
to report the needs of the Church. It is signifi- 
cant that after doing what he was sent to do at 
Kansas City, Bishop Barron went to the Jesuits 
and requested them to look after Kansas City. 
Father Verreydt without delay renewed his work 
here. The probability is the Jesuits were finding 
their labors at home with the Pottawatomie tribes 
and the Indians at Kickapoo too taxing for their 
periodical visits to Kansas City. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

LETTERS TO THE CATHOLIC BANNER- 
FIRST MISSIONARY VENTURES. 







'DITOR Catholic Banner: I promised you 
in a communication of April last to give 
your readers a map of the missions at- 
tached to Independence in my letter of 
appointment. Your request naturally comes from 
a desire to know just what was the territory I had 
to cover. It is interesting to your readers and to 
all young priests to be informed what was de- 
manded of a priest in 1845. 

The Bishop's letter of appointment read as 
follows: "You are hereby appointed resident pas- 
tor of Independence, Missouri. From Independ- 
ence you will at close intervals say Mass and hear 
confessions at Kaw-town on the Missouri River 
near the Kaw River. All Jackson County and 
every county immediately south of Jackson and 
east of the Territory to the north line of Arkansas, 
will be your southwest limit; then eastward; your 
northern line of labor will embrace Henry County 
and every county south of Henry to the north line 
of Arkansas. While you are on this missionary 
tour be sure to write the Jesuit Fathers in charge 
of the Pottawatomie Indians to say Mass and hear 
confessions and attend sick calls in Jackson County." 
Instead, I secured the services of priest from the St. 
Louis College, who frequently came up as far as 
Lexington. 

I give you the boundary lines within which I 
was to labor. Since I am a civil engineer and 
map maker I could send you a map as you re- 
quested, but reproducing a map on newspaper 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 105 

pages is neither an easy nor a good looking job. 
My first trip south and east to the north line of 
Arkansas was started immediately after Pentecost, 
1847. I left Independence with a very thorough 
map of the country I was entering drawn up by a 
competent surveyor and engineer in the U. S. 
service named Louis T. Craddock. He was a friend 
and neighbor who lived near me in Independence. 
His present was a map of large proportions, most 
complete in details, with rivers, streams and ele- 
vations, and marked with the easiest roads for 
travel. As he had on more than one occasion 
traveled in his official character through my mis- 
sions and had formed many acquaintances, he 
knew hotel and tavern and hospitable farmers 
through the territory. He was a Catholic and 
made it a point to reach Catholics and encourage 
them in their seldom-attended country. 

The greatest difficulties of this first entrance 
into my mission land were removed by the kind- 
ness of my friend. My compass stood me in good 
service. My observing neighbors had frequently 
told me that my horsemanship had improved won- 
derfully. The Jesuit Fathers who never tired giv- 
ing me practical suggestions for missionary life ad- 
vised me shortly after my arrival here to buy an 
Indian pony. It was sure-footed, not easily 
frightened by snake or wild beast, could climb like 
a goat, and endure heat and storm and long fast- 
ing like a camel. Besides and best of all the 
Indian pony was native to the soil. He seemed to 
know everyone and everything on the journey — 
like the Indian he never noticed anything or any- 
body provided he was let alone. His speed was 
an easy lope, but for a little while at a time he 
would hasten his pace. He never grew lame and 
never showed fatigue. In my knapsacks, hanging 
from the back of the pony and down his sides, I 



106 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

had three heavy Indian blankets, a few pounds of 
coffee, some sugar and hard army crackers, my 
breviaries, chasuble, with all other requirements 
for Mass and altar. I found room for a water- 
proof coat and two changes of underwear. I 
started out under a clear sky and found a com- 
fortable bed that night. The second day began 
propitiously, but about noon a storm broke over 
me. The rain lasted all day and night. In the 
darkness I missed my bearings and soon discovered 
I was off the road. Fortunately I had wandered 
towards a stone formation and was out of the mud. 
With the light made by my flint and steel I saw a 
large stone ledge fully two feet high and under 
the circumstances ideal for a bed. I covered my 
pony with one of the blankets and the other two 
I used for a soft cover over the large rock and for 
warmth and protection from the rain. I slept well 
and was up and on my journey early in the morn- 
ing. I soon found my trail and before nine o'clock 
came up to a stream of clear water fringed on 
both sides by trees. Here I prepared my coffee 
and ate my first missionary breakfast. During the 
next few hours I caught up with two men well ac- 
quainted with the country and many of its peo- 
ple. We were in Cass County. My traveling com- 
panions were from Kentucky but were then liv- 
ing in Missouri and were dealers in real estate, we 
call it now — it was then just buying and selling 
farms. They kindly directed me to a Catholic 
family living about where Harrisonville is. The 
family were all Catholic, born in Ireland, and had 
been two years ''drifting," as they said, from New 
Orleans to their present home. They were on a 
small farm and living in a comfortable farmhouse. 
They had two neighbors a few miles south who 
were Catholics, too. They begged me to stay with 
them until they could bring their neighbors, and 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 107 

then would I be good enough to say Mass and give 
them the benefits of the Sacraments. I surely 
would. I was favorably disappointed in finding 
Catholics so soon. Mass was said and the Sacra- 
ments approached. The terrors of the long jour- 
ney ahead of me began to leave me. 

My host and his Catholic neighbors had wan- 
dered considerably coming here and had hunted 
far south of their homes in search of birds for 
their tables. Fresh meat was out of the question. 
Why, even in Independence, it was pork dried, 
pork salted, week in and week out. A iarmer 
would notify us that he was about to kill and 
butcher a heifer or cow, and how many pounds 
and what parts of the carcass would we buy? 
Fresh meat was purchased by the hotels at the 
levee from steamboats, but after seven or eight 
days of river travel the meat needed the immediate 
care of ice, and ice formed here in winter, then 
melted. During my part of a two days' stay I 
feasted on prairie chicken and delicious birds 
peculiar to the country. My three Catholic friends 
insisted on accompanying me through Bates and 
Vernon counties where they were not only com- 
panions and guides, but where they brought me to 
three Catholic families and succeeded in locating 
four more, making in all ten families, and with 
their own three families thirteen altogether. I 
performed the Divine Services twice in Bates and 
twice in Vernon counties. After the return of my 
friends to their homes the sunlight seemed to de- 
part. I was not lonesome, for I was a student of 
nature. I would dismount from my pony to ex- 
amine loess as I saw it change from stone com- 
position to a black, productive soil. I had studied 
rock, I carried with me the geologist's hammer. 
The trees were interesting in themselves. They 
were of hard bark and were in some instances 



108 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

called iron — an appropriate name, for the presence 
of such trees told of iron, lead and other valuable 
deposits. I had no Catholics to engage my mind 
and time, so the Earth, and especially this part of 
it, occupied me. 

In Vernon County (near Nevada of today) in 
following my friend Mr. Craddock's directions, I 
found an Irishman named Donnelly. His wife was 
not a Catholic but had been taking instructions in 
the Catechism. She was instructed and well dis- 
posed, and so for the first time in my mission trip 
I administered the sacrament of baptism. On the 
expectation of finding more Catholics nearby I re- 
mained under the hospitable roof of my namesake 
for three days. He and I scoured the country 
around and brought back with us a German Catho- 
lic named Latmer and a Kentuckian named Hawkes. 
Their families were all Catnolics and were at 
Mass on my third day's stay. A John Fagan 
added one more to our audience. As fortune had 
it there was a public meeting in a large square or 
clearing near a Protestant church to which every- 
body was invited. This church was a typical 
country church of olden times and faced the coun- 
try road. The preacher and myself met the first 
day I was there and became friendly. He told me 
of the coming meeting and invited me to be present 
and to say something. I promised to do so. The 
object of the meeting was to work up a site for a 
coming town. The attendance filled the church. 
Two of the prominent speakers failed to attend. 
The preacher and myself were the only orators on 
hand. ''There must be four speakers,'' said the 
preacher. ''You'll talk two times and I'll talk two 
times. You see we must give the people all we 
promised." When three speeches were delivered 
all was said that could be said regarding the ad- 
visability of starting a town and how to go about 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 109 

it. So when it came my second turn I told them 
that a real true speciman of a Roman priest stood 
before them. ''Look for the horns, you won't dis- 
cover any hoof. You'll see in me a real out and out 
American citizen. Now," I said, ''you find the 
Catholic priest human like yourselves, and I'll pass 
on to tell you what I, a priest, and every other 
priest preaches." I stopped after fully three- 
quarters of an hour, but there was a universal and 
emphatic demand to "go on, go on." I did so. 
When I concluded the preacher said, "I wish our 
friend, this good priest, would give us a talk in 
this church tomorrow afternoon. Tell us about the 
Pope." The crowd voted in favor of another 
speech and on the Pope. I felt that some pre- 
judice, at least, might be removed, so I gave the 
talk about the Pope. Those people lived scattered 
around for miles, but they were on hand next day. 
They gave me the closest attention and a vote of 
thanks. On my arrival at home I found a letter 
from the preacher who told me he had thought over 
my speeches, had studied the Catechism, and 
would like more Catholic literature. I sent him 
the literature. One year afterwards he called on 
me and entered the ranks of the church. He was 
baptized, for he assured me that preacher though 
he was he had never received the sacrament of 
baptism. 

On my third and last trip on mission I called 
again to find a new clergyman in charge, who in- 
vited me to stop over on Sunday and take charge 
of his pulpit, as he wanted to visit friends down 
in Arkansas. I did so and the people saw for the 
first time Holy Mass and heard another Catholic 
sermon. This time my subject was the Mass. 

My first tour followed the tier of counties from 
Jackson in a direct line to what is now McDonald 
County. I returned by the counties immediately 



110 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

east. My return was devoid of the interesting 
features of the trip south. The Catholics were 
fewer and the scenery less diversified. I found 
traces here and there of the work of the Lazarist 
Fathers through those parts. At four places they 
spent some days preaching to the natives. A dis- 
tant relative of the Hayden family at the Barrens 
told me that the Fathers were anything but en- 
couraged by their efforts in the counties they 
visited. I heard eight confessions, baptized two 
infants, prepared an aged sick man for death. 
This was the result of my first returning visit. The 
two other missionary trips were almost devoid of 
results. I saw few Indians on my tours, and no 
uncivilized ones. 

But I saw a wonderful country, fertile and 
rolling. People in search of healthful and pro- 
ductive localities will surely come here and in num- 
bers. I have often heard of the wonderful scenic 
beauties and grandeur of the mountain countries 
along the range of the Rockies. I doubt if there 
is anything in the far west more beautiful, more 
picturesque, than parts of the Ozark range through 
which I drove. The mountains of the far West are 
awe-inspiring, but the Ozark range places before 
you pictures unequaled for diversity. The cascades, 
the streams of clear, cool water, traverse the moun- 
tain sides and going down into the valleys give a 
vitality to the soil. I have never seen even in Ire- 
land grass so green and in such abundance. Like 
Ireland, the Ozark country has its tales of valorous 
deeds of an ancient people who fought every in- 
vading tribe. The Spanish adventurers occupied 
for years all that portion of Missouri. They were 
not there for health, nor for love of Nature's 
charming scenery. It was not the unsurpassed 
fishing and hunting and trading with the Indians 
that brought them and held them there. Long 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 111 

years before gold deposits were discovered and the 
famous Phillebert Mine was located. Silver mines 
were opened and operated by the Spaniards. Phil- 
lebert was one of a family who were among the 
earliest settlers of St. Louis. He left St. Louis to 
kill wild animals and birds and Indians almost 
immediately after his arrival. He had a business 
eye as well as an adventurous soul. He established 
a trading post near the point where the James 
River empties into the White River. He was 
adopted by the Delawares and went with them into 
the Ozarks. From the Indians it is supposed 
Phillebert learned of the mines called for him. 
The location of these mines was held secret from 
his very familJ^ He would frequently leave home 
for long intervals and always returned with a large 
quantity of silver. His silver »is classified as "horn 
silver."* I feel sure there is wealth in abundance 
in the specimens of stone I have seen. But the 
stone I saw in the neighborhood of some easy 
ascending grades (in Carthage) will prove the 
very finest building material. It is almost as white 
as the famed Carrara marble in Italy. 

I have already drawn too largely on your 
columns and on the patience of your readers. My 
three missionary journeys were not prolific of 
much spiritual good. There was no growth of 
population from my first to my third visits. The 
Mexican War had sent people out of my south- 
western territory rather than brought any increase. 
I met General Kearnej^ and his troops on their way 
to the Rio Grande, also Colonel Donaldson, my 
friend, who led the Missouri regiment. It was a 
great pleasure to me to shake the hand of General 

*Horn silver is the chloride, which when pure is 75.3 
per cent silver. It occurs in hornlike masses, of a grayish 
color, turning: black on exposure to light. It is so soft it 
can be cut with a knife. 



112 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

Shields on his way to war. I spent a night and a 
day in his tent over two hundred miles south of 
my home at Independence. The general and a 
goodly number of his command approached the 
Sacraments during my stay with him. My third 
and last long southern mission ended in a finan- 
cial disaster — I missed the honor and felt the loss 
of the donation given by Mr. Jabez Smith on the 
occasion of his second marriage at Independence. 
Kansas City and Independence advanced in 
population and in importance as a consequence of 
the Mexican War. Today there are priests and 
parishes in many places not then on the map in 
southwest Missouri. Springfield, Rolla, Joplin and 
Carthage had no existence in the '40s and early 
'50s. Mark my prophecy, a bishop will soon rule 
all that country and his see will be in Kansas City. 
As I often said to you, there will be a bishop yet 
in Wyandotte. There were never any prophets in 
our family; they were always too busy trying to 
live in the present and trying to forget the past, 
to give a thought to what the future might bring 
forth. I may have some more recollections for 
the good Banner very soon. 

Bernard Donnelly. 

the drake constitution. 
Editor Catholic Banner: 

Perhaps we old-fashioned missionaries and our 
pioneer flocks and neighbors did not make much 
history. Well, we went through some live eras of 
development. The state motto of Kansas covers 
the history of life in the new West from the 
twenties and thirties up to the year of Grace, 1879. 
How proudly and truthfully our western neighbors 
describe life out here: "Per Aspera ad Astra." In 
every new country people suffer for want of life's 
comforts and sometimes life's necessities. In other 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 113 

districts east of the Mississippi the first settlers 
and the builders of the present civilization carry 
in their systems the poison of miasma common to 
new countries. So do we — we grew thin and weak 
and sallow from ague and swamp fever, and weak 
and nervous from the overdosing of quinine, ipecac, 
tincture of silver and other medicines administered 
to destroy the effects of the exhalations of the 
swamps and new-tossed earth. 

Life is more than a venture in a newly touched 
country. On the border line of Kansas and Mis- 
souri the air and the soil, the insects and the wild 
beasts and the Indians might be endured, avoided 
or made innocuous. The new country furnished 
hardship enough. But the civilization from Boston 
and south of the Mason and Dixon Line was forc- 
ing on us the curse of civil war. "Slavery must 
be abolished," cried Wendell Phillips and Henry 
Ward Beecher. ^'Slavery shall not be abolished," 
crifed back Senator Haynes and Jefferson Davis 
from south of the Mason and Dixon Line. ''We'll 
fight, and even die, for our principles," said both 
North and South. And for years before the clash 
of the Civil War they did fight and made battle 
fields in Jackson County and the Kanzas Territory. 
The four years of conflict never gave this county 
a day's respite. Everywhere else the war closed 
at the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox. 
Not so in Missouri. Our state was a battlefield for 
the four years of carnage between North and South. 
The soldiers from both sides returned to Missouri 
when the Union troops were reviewed by President 
Johnson and his cabinet at Washington and when 
the army of Jefferson Davis was disbanded. Peace 
came back with the veterans of four years. But 
it was the peace which meant that the roaring of 
cannon had ceased and that drilled men were not 
marching against each other in battle array. The 



114 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

rancour that brought on the war had not died out. 
The boys of the blue and the gray were working 
on their farms and at their avocations again, but 
the marplot was busy. Perhaps he had not fought 
in the war days. The Southern cause had been 
beaten to defeat and surrender. The screws of 
revenge had to be tightened. The political states- 
men who had lost neither life nor limb, but who 
had grown rich and fallen in love with power of 
office, saw a scheme for holding on to what he had 
acquired and adding to it. Missouri needed a new 
constitution. Judge Drake and many other good 
haters knew just how to draft a constitution that 
would give play to their ambition and the power 
to humble their beaten ex-Confederate neighbors 
by depriving them of the right of franchise. The 
old know-nothing bigotry would have a chance to 
injure a church, known as Catholic, but in their 
vocabulary "Romish." They soon drew up a new 
constitution and handed it to the voters for adop- 
tion. There was little time wasted in formulating 
into the document all the cunning, hatred and in- 
justice necessary for their purpose. Some of the 
most vicious and vindictive of the designers and 
drafters of the new constitution crushing out free- 
dom of thought even in the right of franchise, were 
foreigners barely able to speak and understand our 
language, men who rose up against Fatherland in 
order to gain for themselves what they were now 
denying native Americans who allowed them to 
live when defeat drove them from home. 

An exasperating scrutiny and the refusal in 
thousands of instances to accept votes against the 
adoption, besides a public disfranchisement of loyal 
native citizens, made an easy victory for the new 
constitution. It was called the Drake Constitution 
for the man who inspired it. All professional men 
were barred their calling if they refused to take 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 115 

an oath of loyalty. Ministers of the Gospel could 
not preach until they subscribed to the oath, A 
citizen who had at any time even thought favor- 
ably of the dead cause of the South was disfran- 
chised. 

Archbishop Kenrick ordered a protest against 
the oath and a refusal to take it. Every priest 
said his archbishop spoke for him. Many clergy- 
men of protestant sects refused. The Catholic 
priest receives his authority to preach from the 
Divine Master through his Orders. 

Only three or four priests in Missouri were 
arrested. Father John Cummings, the young pas- 
tor of Louisiana, was arrested and put in jail. It 
is believed the arrest was made by a blundering 
deputy counsellor in the office of the United States 
Attorney, Patterson Dyer, who was absent in the 
interests of the Government. He was in St. Joseph, 
Missouri, pleading a case. There was no man in 
Missouri more pained by this arrest than Mr. Pat- 
terson. He never so much as thought of making 
his dear friend and fellow citizen of Louisiana a 
victim of the Drake Constitution. He telegraphed 
an order to release Father Cummings and hastened 
home on the first train to undo the outrage. But 
Father Cummings refused to leave his cell. Arch- 
bishop Kenrick ordered Father Keiley of St. Louis 
to go to Louisiana and say to Father Cummings it 
was his wish to leave the jail, which he did. This 
arrest was the death-knell of the Drake Oath 
His Grace employed the best legal talent of Mis- 
souri, headed by Alexander J. P. Garasche, to test 
the constitutionality of this clause. A hearing was 
brought before the Missouri State Court. The state 
court of course sustained the validity of the arrest. 
An appeal was taken to the Supreme Court at 
Washington, where the decision of the Missouri 
court was reversed and the oath declared unconsti- 



116 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

tutional. This decision met with universal approval 
all over the nation. The Radicals (as the party in 
power in Missouri was called) were chagrined, 
yet many of the more conservative among them 
were loud in approval. Not only lawyers, doctors 
and clergy were victims of this oath, but school 
teachers and professors in colleges as well. The 
entire faculty in the Seminary at Cape Girardeau 
and the Sisters of Loretto in charge of the female 
academy there were arrested and forced to appear 
at Jackson, the county seat, where they were de- 
tained for several days at the convenience of the 
judge. The interference of the governor of the 
state quashed all proceedings in this instance. 

All legal expense towards nullifying the Drake 
Oath in both lower and higher courts was borne by 
Archbishop Kenrick. That mild, retiring and inof- 
fensive clergyman belonged to a family which had 
in its day a coat of arms bearing the device, "Noli 
me tangere," in English "Don't touch me." 

England, France, Germany, Italy and ancient 
nations have time and again tried by law strategy 
to interfere with the right of the Church to preach 
the Gospel of Christ, but like Drake and his Mis- 
souri Constitution have been foiled. Its laws are 
God-given and its rights have the seal of Heaven 
on them. 

concerning archbishop kenrick. 

Editor Catholic Banner: 

This correspondence will be devoted to Arch- 
bishop Kenrick. While teaching school in Phil- 
adelphia I called on the Very Reverend P. R. Ken- 
rick, then professor of Theology and Rector of the 
diocesan Seminary. He was a brother of the Right 
Reverend Francis Patrick Kenrick, bishop of Phil- 
adelphia. He was several years younger than his 
brother. Young as he was (he was hardly thirty 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 117 

years of age) he had the measured, steady gait of 
today. He looked fully five feet, ten inches, tall, 
was not spare but athletic in build, and a lover of 
long walks. After the afternoon classes he left 
the seminary for this daily exercise. Punctual in 
everything, he opened the front door to the second 
at 4:30 p. m. He always walked alone. Weather 
made no break in his daily routine. I heard from 
one of the professors that he owed his health to 
daily walks. It seems he was very delicate the 
last year in the college of Maynooth, and after 
his ordination he was appointed chaplain to a con- 
vent outside of Dublin. It was thought by his 
Metropolitan, Archbishop Murray, that parish 
work was too severe for him. He had ample time 
for his chosen exercise and soon grew rugged. He 
was invited to the Philadelphia diocese almost as 
soon as his brother became bishop. He was 
immediately assigned to a professorship in the 
seminary and in a little while became rector. He 
was also Vicar General. For some months he was 
pastor of Pittsburgh, then recalled to the seminary. 
He resigned this position and was to go to Kome 
to become a Jesuit. His traveling companion was 
Bishop Rosatti of St. Louis. The bishop took a 
fancy to the young man and petitioned Pope Gre- 
gory XVI to appoint him his coadjutor in St. Louis. 
This was done without consulting Father Kenrick. 
When he called on the Pope what was his sur- 
prise to learn that he was to be coadjutor at St. 
Louis and take charge of the diocese during the 
absence of Bishop Rosatti, who was made Apostolic 
Delegate to a South American country. The Pope 
informed Father Kenrick that he wished him to 
accept the dignity. He and Bishop Rosatti soon re- 
turned to America, where on November 30th, 1842, 
in the cathedral of Philadelphia, he was consecrated 
Bishop by the Right Reverend Joseph Rosatti. 



118 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

Bishop England preached at the consecration. By 
a singular coincidence a St. Louis priest named 
Lafavre was consecrated in the same cathedral a 
day or two before for Detroit. Bishop Lafavre for 
some years attended all northeastern Missouri and 
Illinois along the Mississippi River. Bishop Ken- 
rick left for his western home a few days after his 
consecration. He traveled through Pennsylvania 
as far as Pittsburgh. He took a boat on the Ohio 
River. He had to change steamers at Cincinnati. 
A delay of two days in Cincinnati detained him in 
Bishop Purcell's residence, where I did myself the 
honor of calling on him. I was then teaching 
school at Lancaster. He said he remembered my 
call on him in Philadelphia. 

Although it was in my mind to apply for a 
place in the Barrens Seminary, I did not do so for 
Bishop Purcell was present and I had spoken to 
him some time before in regard to my vocation to 
the priesthood. He encouraged me and talked as 
if he wished to adopt me into the Cincinnati dio- 
cese. I did not repeat my call on the new bishop 
and did not see him again until he received me 
into the St. Louis diocese. I preferred St. Louis 
because I wished to work among the Indians. There 
were few, if any, Indians left in Ohio, and I knew 
that the extensive diocese of St. Louis had many 
tribes, some of them under the care of the Jesuit 
Fathers. I was at the Barrens Seminary for some 
time and then transferred to the diocesan seminary 
at St. Louis, under the learned Father Panquin, a 
Lazarist Father. Father Panquin was a man of 
solid piety and as a theologian and general scholar 
was known from St. Louis to the Atlantic. 

I was ordained in St. Louis Cathedral in 1845. 
My theological course was not very long, but was 
thorough, thanks to my able professor. Bishop 
Kenrick did not put aside his theological professor- 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 119 

ship when he became head of a diocese, for he 
visited his seminary two and sometimes three times 
a week. He listened attentively to the learned dis- 
courses of Father Panquin and wound up the hour 
with questions and puzzles. Before the ordination 
of our class the bishop spent two full days putting 
us through a thorough sifting on philosophy and 
theology as well as other branches of study. His 
Latin was Ciceronian and he confined his queries 
to that tongue. Father Panquin frequently lauded 
the bishop's classical Latin. 

Since the Seminary days I have not had the 
pleasure and benefit of Archbishop Kenrick's com- 
pany as often as I would wish. But I know him 
well by his goodness and his standing in the epis- 
copacy of America. He is first among the fore- 
most. What I have to say of my archbishop is in 
accord with what every priest in his diocese says 
and knows. He is not only a scholar of the highest 
rank in priestly lore, but he is a scientist of ac- 
knowledged standing. His translation from the 
French of a learned work on Science and the Bible, 
and his frequent contributions to scientific jour- 
nals are acknowledged evidences that he is a 
scientist. *'A priest should have a knowledge of 
French and German," he used to tell the stu- 
dents. ''Our tongue has a wide range, but the 
great questions engaging the thinking minds of 
our day are only slightly touched by English au- 
thors. In Germany and France you find a classi- 
fication of minds. They have the poets, the his- 
torians, the students of statecraft, and the supere- 
minent philosophers and theologians. The reading 
public patronizes them and they are not forced to 
struggle for an existence. In society and the 
financial world men are proud to refer to their 
acquaintance with the two great European lan- 
guages. The priest is by every requirement a stu- 



120 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

dent. He should be in close association with the 
leaders of thought. Remember the German and 
French writers are tireless and thorough. They 
do not put together epitomes — ^they write exhaus- 
tive dissertations." This advice was as regular as 
his visits to the seminarians. His library is large 
and select. 

In appearance our Archbishop has a natural 
dignity that attracts attention. A brilliant young 
priest named John Ireland, now Bishop of St. Paul, 
in a series of articles appearing in a Chicago news- 
paper under the title of ''Men and Things I saw 
and heard at the Vatican Council," says of Arch- 
bishop Kenrick: "While a chaplain in the army 
during the Civil War I was the bearer of some 
military orders that had to be handed to a com- 
manding officer with headquarters at St. Louis. 
While in that city I visited Archbishop Kenrick. I 
had often heard of His Grace, but now for the 
first time I saw him. He was my Metropolitan, 
but I was a young priest in St. Paul and from my 
ordination was very busy as assistant in our Cathe- 
dral. He impressed me very highly. The next 
time I met him was in Rome during the Vatican 
Council. I was still a priest. I called on His 
Grace at his lodgings and asked if I might oc- 
casionally escort him when he took his daily walk 
on the Appian Way. With a cheerful smile he 
said, *'Yes, I shall be delighted. This walk is my 
only exercise here. There will be no Session of 
the Council tomorrow afternoon. Let us meet at 
three o'clock in the afternoon." I had heard of 
his methodical habits as to time and I was at the 
starting place to the second — so was His Grace. 
When we reached the famed promenade, we found 
a large number of ecclesiastics from minutantis 
or attachees of the Vatican to Bishops, Arch- 
bishops and Cardinals. We had scarcely joined 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 121 

the array when Cardinal D'Angelis, the presiding 
member of the Vatican Council, approached. His 
eyes fell on Archbishop Kenrick and he left his 
companion and moved to the Archbishop, whom he 
shook by the hand and addressed in friendly terms, 
as if they were old friends. This was a happy 
surprise to me and I am sure to the others who saw 
the exchange of greetings and who recognized the 
participants. The Archbishop introduced me to 
the Cardinal. The Cardinal was the leader of the 
Infallibilists and His Grace of St. Louis led the 
Inopportunists, and had up to that moment on two 
ocassions mounted the tribune in the Council 
Chamber to reply to the arguments of the great 
majority demanding the Decree of Papal Infalli- 
bility. When the Archbishop and I resumed our 
walk. His Grace immediately took up the descrip- 
tion he had been giving of Rome when he first saw 
it in the early summer of 1842. The meeting of 
the Cardinal and himself evidently did not weigh 
on my Metropolitan, but it did on me. During the 
two hours* walk we discussed many subjects, but 
not Papal Infallibility. After this first walk as 
well as after the others, acquaintances would say 
to me, "Who was the distinguished looking digni- 
tary with whom you were walking?" Others saw 
charm of manner, dignity of bearing, and an in- 
tellectual face just as I had." 

His dignity was natural — it was as much a 
part of himself as his great intellect, as his genial 
and even disposition. In his study he met his 
priests with outstretched hand and a "God bless 
you" from his lips and heart. The St. Louis clergy 
invariably fall on their knees as they approach and 
after a blessing kiss his ring. His first and usual 
question follows, "How is your health?" Then, 
"Take great care of your health, for it is the great- 
est asset a priest has-" Then a momentary silence, 



122 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

or a reference to the weather. The priest broaches 
his business. The archbishop counsels or recom- 
mends, or if he sees so, advises adversely. More 
good wishes follow and the priest asks another 
blessing, confident that His Grace has advised 
wisely. Gossip, politics, tales about priests or the 
diocese are never entered into by the archbishop, 
and should the priest offer such subjects the ex- 
pression on the archbishop's face and a forbidding 
look would mean that the interview was over. No 
reprimand in words. A witticism in the natural 
trend of the conversation would be graciously ac- 
knowledged and fonowed by some amusing remark 
by His Grace. He enjoys a pun and shows approval 
at any witty scintillation by a smile or quiet laugh. 
His modulated tones are easily heard. Loud lan- 
guage or high-toned singing are grating to his ear. 
His singing on the Altar is sweet and correct with 
the notes of the rubrics. When visiting a priest 
for confirmation, cornerstone laying, or church 
blessing, he strives to save all unnecessary atten- 
tion and begs to be allowed to feel at home and 
to put up with the ordinary everyday run of things. 
His visits always leave happy recollections. He 
never departs without thanking the domestics for 
their kindness. 

He must be slow to chide, for I on one occa- 
sion seemed an offender. When an act of direct 
disregard of obedience was telegraphed the Mis- 
souri Republican, I know he read the printed false- 
hood and quietly awaited my statement. The mis- 
representation referred to was consequent to the 
order of the Archbishop for every priest to read 
to his congregation on a certain Sunday a con- 
demnation, and a refusal to obey the Drake Consti- 
tution commanding ministers of the Gospel to take 
an oath of allegiance to the state government of 
Missouri and not dare preach until the oath was 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 123 

taken and signed. This order was a claim that 
the right to preach the Gospel came from the state. 
The pagan enactment of old was resurrected. I 
read the archbishop's letter and entered my pro- 
test in clear, strong terms. My closing words were : 
''When the united sentiment of condemnation of 
the state's claims and the state's interference with 
our God-given authority and commission to preach 
the Gospel reaches the capital at Jefferson City 
the bigots will weaken and deny they meant what 
they enjoined. The papers tell us that one of the 
originators of this anti-Christian demand is already 
weakening and said, "If they persist in refusing to 
obey, we may compromise and allow the preachers 
and priests to lecture on the Bible." In one of 
our pews sat a disreputable man who a few days 
before was arrested by our Mayor during a sword 
practice for a duel with one of our citizens. Be- 
sides being a wild-eyed, quarrelsome man, he spoke 
on frequent occasions shockingly disrespectful 
things about religion. He claimed he had been a 
Catholic, but long since left the Church. In the 
Catholic Church at Jefferson City he interrupted 
the priest in the pulpit and broke out into a blas- 
phemous harangue against the Pope, bishops and 
priests. His guiding evil spirit led him to my 
church this morning. He surely saw in the news- 
papers that the archbishop's letter would be read 
and the new law defied. He had now and then 
dabbled in newspaper work. Here was a chance 
to lie against a priest and an opportunity to earn 
a few dollars as correspondent. The story he sent 
the St. Louis paper was that Father Donnelly said 
he would obey the constitution and instead of 
preaching would for the future lecture on the Gos- 
pel. All he telegraphed filled a column on the 
front page of the St. Louis Republican. I had 
heard tne archbishop say he rarely read more than 



124 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

the headlines in a paper. The interesting story 
about me likely led him to read from beginning to 
end. I only surmise, for I never heard him refer 
to the matter. But several of my clerical friends 
became solicitous about me and sent me telegrams 
of doubt, denunciation, and fear as to my certain 
fate. The St. Louis dailies did not reach here then 
until late in the afternoon. I hastened to purchase 
the Republican of that morning and when I read 
it I sent a telegram to my archbishop vigorously 
denying the statements and regretting that I was 
an innocent occasion of grief and chagrin to him. 
I also sent a long message by wire to the Repub- 
lican, which it published on Tuesday morning. I 
soon learned who the correspondent was and lost 
not a moment in trying to meet him. But, coward 
and liar that he was, he left the city early Monday 
for parts unknown. 

My second untoward venture had a business 
intent. It was backed by a desire to save the arch- 
bishop from the bungling of an inexperienced man 
in whom his Grace had confidence. For several 
years he was in the employ of the archbishop as 
his superintendent in the construction of the many 
buildings the archbishop was erecting on vacant 
diocesan property. It was in 1869 and His Grace 
was preparing to attend the Vatican Council in 
Rome. He made it known that during his absence 
this builder would represent him as his business 
agent and would have charge of the sale of many 
tracts of land in the new parts of the city. The 
Celini estate left by a Father Celini to be disposed 
of after a certain time and the proceeas used for 
the benefit of keeping old and decrepit priests of 
the archdiocese of St. Louis, was to be put on the 
market. Here was a matter that concerned the 
priesthood of all Missouri — their property was in 
the hands of this lay agent. Like Shakespeare's 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 125 

Caesar he had grown great, and his meat was the 
archbishop's patronage. At a called meeting in 
the rectory of a St. Louis priest, diocesan clergy 
from city and country missions drew up a mild and 
reverential protest against this appointee handling 
as agent the bequest of the St. Louis priest to 
priests. If His Grace insisted on selling this grant, 
there were priests in the archdiocese who could 
handle the sale more judiciously than he and would 
by their management bring better financial results. 
The paper was signed by all present. The names 
they selected as worthy and competent agents were 
among the senior and experienced priests. They 
were: Rev. William Wheeler, Rev. Patrick O'Brien 
and Rev. Bernard Donnelly. These reverend gen- 
tlemen were a committee to hand the protest to His 
Grace. That afternoon they waited on the Arch- 
bishop and read the document to him. Each one 
in turn said a few words, laying stress on what 
they called the ignorance of this party on real 
estate values. His Grace listened with utmost at- 
tention. When we had finished a heavy silence 
followed. It seemed, but really was not, long when 
he asked each one of us, "Are you through. Rev- 
erend Father?" Our reply was, "Yes." Then open- 
ing the door of his study he said, "Good day, gen- 
tlemen." The Celini estate was sold. I learn, for 
I was not present, that the Vicar-General, Very 
Rev. P. J. Ryan, at the annual meeting of the 
Priests' Purgatorial Society of the Archdiocese in 
the Immaculate Conception Chur(?h, St. Louis, No- 
vember, 1870, called on the priests present to start 
a mutual aid society for old and infirm priests. 
To the question of Father P. O'Brien, the Vicar- 
General replied there were no funds in the arch- 
diocese for needy priests. I have at my elbow a 
copy of the Acts and Decrees of the St. Louis Synod 
held in 1852. There the fund is mentioned. I 



126 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

knew Father Celini and heard him state that he 
had put aside legally a tract of land in St. Louis 
for poor priests. 

No wingless angels in human shape swing in- 
cense around Archbishop Kenrick. A glance from 
his soul-penetrating eyes would still the flatterer, 
and words of reproof would paralyze the tale 
bearer. No coterie of the self-seeking kind could 
endure in this diocese. His selections for honors 
always have been men of brains and good work. 
**Take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his 
like again." 

During the four years of the Civil War, Arch- 
bishop Kenrick never crossed the lines of his own 
diocese. When his brother. Archbishop Francis 
Patrick Kenrick of Baltimore, died suddenly in 
July, 1863, he did not attend the funeral. No 
provincial assembly of the bishops of the Province 
was held, although one was due but recalled. Pro- 
vincial synods or councils were regular every few 
years. His Grace carried out all the details of the 
beautiful ceremonial of Holy Week. He pontifi- 
cated on Holy Thursday and Good Friday, and 
invariably preached on both days. Pastors and 
assistants of all the city churches attended in the 
Sanctuary. After the Easter of 1861 His Grace 
never appeared in the Sanctuary during the period 
of war except to say a low or early Mass, and to 
confirm and ordain. All during the conflict of 
arms he practiced prudence in word and action. 
On one occasion, a student of theology belonging 
to St. Louis, notified His Grace that he had been 
drafted into the army, and begged advice. Arch- 
bishop Kenrick's reply was as follows: 

**Dear Sir: Prudence forbids me to do more 
than acknowledge the receipt of your letter. 

Yours truly, 

P. R. Kenrick." 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 127 

Priests imperceptibly pattern themselves after 
their bishop. The St. Louis clergy are studious, 
hardworking and pious. Their reputation for these 
qualities is recognized the country over. It is an 
honor to belong to Archbishop Kenrick's diocese. 

B. Donnelly. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

FATHER DONNELLY AND HIS BROTHER 

PRIESTS. 



E 



ATHER DONNELLY lived so far away 
from his brother priests and kept himself 
so busy at Independence, Kansas City, and 
his missions, that he seldom found time to 
visit them. Even in his home town he rarely 
called on anyone except for business purposes. His 
well-selected library grew dearer as he grew older. 
His Greek and Latin books were ever at his side. 
He read them, he translated them day after day. 
He purchased every new work on science and his- 
tory. Murray's English Grammar was well thumbed 
and frequently brought into requisition while enter- 
taining a visitor. His writing and correspondence 
were done after the supper meal was over. The 
light by which he wrote was a small sperm candle 
held in the mouth of a soda water bottle. He wrote 
slowly, every little while taking up the manuscript 
and looking at it to find if the "t" was crossed and 
the "i" dotted, and the word spelled correctly. 
Then he had a habit quite common in his day of 
leaving the letter or writing unfinished, to be con- 
tinued the next night. As he closed his writing 
he would draw a line under it and put a new date 
on the next page. Some of his letters run over 
five or six days, which meant five or six dates. 

The school-room and the desk had the effect 
of making Father Donnelly in after life at times a 
recluse in the sense that he rarely left his home 
or city. When some strenuous effort engaged him 
for a lengthy period, such as collecting for church, 
hospital, and other edifices, or some wear and tear 
like the Westport battle and its consequent work 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 129 

» 
among the sick, wounded or dead, occupied his 
time and attention, he sought relief and relaxation 
by retiring to his little home and going forth only 
at the call of business or duty. His habits were 
well fixed before he became a priest. He enjoyed 
company and could indulge in joke and repartee 
and above all was ready in argument when discus- 
sion arose. All such pleasant opportunities had 
to come to him, for his visits were sudden and 
short. If his predecessors, the missionary Jesuits, 
had ever gone over his territory, they went in 
turns, one man this time, another the next. Strong 
as he was physically he needed and took occasion- 
ally a long rest. When rest and quiet were over 
he saw many things to do. His clerical friends 
were miles away. He no doubt yearned for con- 
genial company and he knew that could be found 
only when priests came together. The coming to- 
gether of priests strengthens them all, their ex- 
ample is effective, and their interchange of senti- 
ments and experiences helpful and encouraging. 
The passing missionary from some monastery or 
religious house, and a few priests of the diocesan 
order were all who could afford to come to Kanzas 
or Independence. Father Donnelly was as little 
able to defray traveling expenses as they were. 

The missionary waiting for passage on a north- 
bound boat would drop in on him at Independence 
or Kanzas. At Independence he would share his 
confined quarters with his guest and in the '40s 
and early '50s he brought the visitor at Kanzas 
to the commodious and hospitable home of the 
Chouteau family. It should be mentioned that 
many of those chance guests were so inured to the 
hardships of their lives on the frontier that they 
slept by choice on the hard floor, being so unac- 
customed to the luxury of a bed that it afforded 
them only a restless night. 



130 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

« 
During all this time Father Donnelly was at 
Independence, at Kanzas, or on his annual two or 
three months' journeying to the Ozarks. When 
Kansas City assumed metropolitan proportions, 
priests usually found quarters at the local hotels, 
and during their stay would rarely forget to pay 
their respects to the pioneer Father Donnelly. 
Every caller went away impressed with his adapt- 
ability. He could bandy jokes and pleasantries 
with the most waggish; he could sing a comic song 
with the visitor who would display his acquaintance 
with and the rendition of an Irish ballad from 
Moore or some well-known maker of rhymes. If 
the caller offered a challenge to a philosophical or 
theological discussion, Father Donnelly hurried to 
pick up the gauntlet. 

Busy Father Donnelly feared to leave his home 
lest the call to some duty would find him absent. 
"A priest is a soldier of the Lord and should for- 
ever be at his post," he would say. Although slow 
to give account of his way or ways of doing things, 
or of his treatment of others, more than once in 
letter or by word of mouth, he would remark: "I 
cannot be happy with assistants because they are 
forever on the go; they don't try to be at home in 
their rooms." Father Kennedy was his closest 
neighbor. They had the same ideas of clerical 
propriety. They both more than once tried but 
failed to bring to task the "guerilla clerics who 
were ever seeking after the goods of other parishes, 
if not the good." Those men he was tree to call 
"marauders who wear sanctimonious faces and 
shake their heads with piteous terms of disap- 
proval of other priests' endeavors." In sickness, 
in death. Father Donnelly was first at the bedside 
of brother priests. His purse was open to the wan- 
dering and destitute clergy. Father Donnelly was 
a priest among priests. His high and holy calling 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 131 

he brought to the attention of priest and laity alike. 
A judge (Judge Latshaw) of high standing, who 
in his childhood days lived near Father Donnelly, 
said in a speech referring to early settlers: **I 
lived as boy and young man near Father Donnelly's 
home. I saw him several times each day, but I 
can never recall his going in or out of his home, 
or moving from the church back three blocks to the 
graveyard, that he did not wear on his head the 
three-cornered cap and his long robe or cassock. 
He was always a priest!" This is no small com- 
pliment, and is an evidence that the man who spoke 
so frequently and so highly of the priesthood was 
glad to display his sacred regalia. It was only to 
see Father Donnelly daily to know that he was 
first and always a priest. While his life brought 
others to a high appreciation of his vocation, he 
constantly lauded brother priests who were true 
to all priestly, gentlemanly and scholarly require- 
ments. 

Father Donnelly was a manly priest — he 
would have been as manly in any other calling. He 
was too big mentally and in generosity of heart 
to be jealous or small in the estimates he made of 
others. He saw men who did little in the priest- 
hood or for the priesthood advanced to high posi- 
tions. He was quick to point out why each one 
went up higher. He even searched for reasons for 
some promotions. His charity was bountiful and 
yet his honesty was as great as his charity, and his 
boldness of expression was as great as either. It 
was generally believed by his friends that his last 
years would be rewarded with some special recogni- 
tion. Some admirers among the clergy petitioned 
his Grace in St. Louis to use his good offices with 
Rome to make Father Donnelly Monsignor, then, 
and for many years afterwards, a dignity unknown 
in America. His Grace replied by saying that 



132 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

there was no honor too high for Father Donnelly 
and that he would bear in mind their request. 
Father Donnelly learned what the priests had done 
and wrote them thanking each one for his kind in- 
tentions but finding fault with them for writing 
the letter. He also wrote a letter to Archbishop 
Kenrick saying that he had reached the highest 
honor for which he was ambitious — he was Father 
Donnelly and wanted to rest with that. 



CHAPTER XV. 
HISTORY OF THE ORIGINAL CHURCH SITE. 



E 



'ATHER BENEDICT LE ROUX, the first 
resident pastor, purchased in 1839 forty- 
acres from Pierre La Liberte for the sum 
of six dollars. He deeded ten acres of this 
to Bishop Rosatti for a consideration in hand of 
two dollars. On the ten acres, when deeded to the 
Bishop, were a log church and a log sitting place 
for a missionary priest. It was entirely too small 
for a residence. There were two little rooms, one 
designed for a kitchen, the other just big enough 
for a narrow couch and a chair or two. The 
church was dismantled when the city laid out 
Pennsylvania Avenue and Eleventh Street. The 
church was at the intersection of the two streets. 
The log hut was sold with other parts of the ori- 
ginal purchase to help pay for the new Cathedral. 
$10,000.00 was the money paid for the lot on 
which the hut rested. The Cathedral cost over 
$100,000. The cathedral of Buffalo, one of the 
most beautiful churches in the United States, was 
completed by Bishop Timon in the '50s for $150,000. 
Material and labor were much lower when the 
Buffalo cathedral was built. To meet the cost 
of Kansas City's cathedral it was necessary to sell 
much of the ten acres. 

Father Donnelly sold that portion of the plot 
facing west on Washington, north on Eleventh and 
south on Twelfth Streets half w^ay to Broadway, 
to build or complete the new St. Joseph's Home 
for Female Orphans. The price it brought waa 
$11,200.00. When streets and sidewalks were run 
through the original ten acress there were left 
about three blocks, with about 120 feet over, ly- 



134 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

ing west of the west line of Jefferson Street. The 
cathedral and some of the unsold property facing 
on Broadway and the portion facing on Washing- 
ton, sold by Father Donnelly (of course with the 
consent of the archbishop) , is the east extreme. 
Father Donnelly, about the time he resigned his 
church, opened and graded Jefferson Street from 
11th to 12th Streets. The block west of Washing- 
ton Avenue was used by the Sisters of St. Joseph 
and was the site of St. Teresa's Academy. From 
Pennsylvania Avenue on the west, to Jefferson 
Street, was the graveyard. When Father Don- 
nelly opened Mount St. Mary's Cemetery burials 
ceased in the old place. Many of the dead were 
transferred to the new grounds. A number of graves 
remained untouched until Father Doherty, Father 
Donnelly's successor, had them all transferred to 
their new home in Mount St. Mary's. 

Concerning the cemetery Father Donnelly wrote 
to the Catholic Banner, February 15, 1880: 

"The churchyard or graveyard was southwest 
of the little log church, fenced in by upright 
pickets driven into the ground. The graves were 
few. 

"There is reason to believe that the first Chris- 
tians who died in the vicinity of Kansas City were 
buried at the summit angle of the bluff just east 
of the foot of Grand Avenue. I saw the rude 
crosses there in 1846. 

"I find in the records of the dead the follow- 
ing primitive names, viz.: Edward Petelle, Mary 
Dripps, (Otto-nata), Virginia Philibert, Marie Bel- 
more, L. Felix Canville, James Gre, Andre P. Roy, 
Lenard Benoist, Lessert, Jarboe, Farrier, and many 
others. Margaret Prudhomme, Henri Henri, etc. 

"Gieso Chouteau, a gallant lieutenant in the 
United States army during the Mexican war, the 
Guinotte brothers, Belgians by birth; Dr. Benoist 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 135 

Troost, a surgeon in the grand army of Napoleon 
the Great, etc., etc. The unassuming people of 
those days were the hardy, fearless pioneers of 
religion and Christian civilization." 

Safeguarding the original ten acres of church 
property purchased by Father Le Koux was a con- 
stant care of Father Donnelly's lifetime. ''When I 
came here in 1845 I found the ten acres, the log 
church and little cabin or resting house in the care 
of Madam Margaret Gre, an Iroquois Indian 
woman, with her six children. The poor woman 
had been forced to abandon her hut in the West 
Kanzas bottoms by the great overflow of 1844. 
She was living in a hovel, half wood and half can- 
vas. She kept the log church neat and tidy. She 
did her cooking in a small apartment on the south 
end of the log hut. She spoke English imperfectly, 
but had a good command of French and her own 
Indian dialect. She was strong and fearless and 
at the approach of strangers carried a large stick 
which she held hoisted in a threatening manner 
until she was sure of the friendly intentions of the 
invaders. 

'It was in 1847 after an absence in South 
Missouri from Independence my home, and Kan- 
zas, my mission, that I luckily obtained the two- 
fold information that a charter had been granted 
and a company formed to lay off a town at the 
river, and that the members of my Catholic con- 
gregation, headed by Dr. Benoist Troost, had held 
several meetings during my absence at which it 
was moved, seconded, and passed to sell the ten 
acre lot for $500 and to accept from the town com- 
pany the donation of six lots of sixty feet front 
each, situated on the high bluff east of Broadway 
where now is to be seen a brickyard. At that time 
$500 was considered a high price for ten acres. 
Next day Dr. Troost called upon me, showed me 



136 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

the petition to Archbishop Kenrick, at the same 
time pointing out the blank intended for my name. 
The Doctor was too intelligent a man not to know 
that the signature of the pastor was more potent 
with the Archbishop than those of all the others 
put together. So the doctor very politely and per- 
suasively requested me to sign the petition. With 
an assuring tone and a confiding look I asked the 
doctor if it were not more politic and prudent to 
address a few lines of my own to the Archbishop 
and give him a more lucid account of matters and 
things at Kansas City, and to point out to his 
Grace the prospective impulse the starting of a 
new city down at the river would give to religion, 
etc. The doctor acquiesced. I wrote a letter to 
the Archbishop stating everything, but warning 
him against complying with the request of the 
petition. Among other things I made the common- 
sense argument to induce him to agree with me: 
*It is true a company has been chartered with the 
object of starting a new town, the site to be laid 
off at the river, but I wish to remind your Grace 
that if it ever be of much account, the city will 
come over our way, for it cannot go into the river, 
and therefore in a short time we may find our- 
selves near enough to it. The town must come this 
way.' The Archbishop answered: *I do not wish 
to divert the church lot near Kanzas from the in- 
tentions of the donor/ " 



^ 



CHAPTER XVI. 
THE COMING OF THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS. 



E 



'ATHER DONNELLY'S entrance into Kan- 
sas City cut off his large missionary field 
on the south and to a great extent on the 
east. His limits were narrowed down, but 
his interest in the old territory was as keen as ever. 
Indeed, he translated the Greek word Episcopos to 
''guardian, superintendent, overseer." He was al- 
ways the Episcopos or overseer, of his old original 
territory. Nothing done in his old field escaped 
his watchful attention. He was happy at the good, 
fruitful work of the priests to whom his domain 
was parcelled off. He lauded the zeal and activi- 
ty of his clerical helpers, and was glad to return a 
visit from any of the new pastors. 

The needs of the Church in Kansas City 
went apace with the growth of the city. He could 
not expect the required financial help from his 
people. With two or three exceptions they were 
all struggling to meet the family demands. He 
quoted the words of the magician: 'There is 
gold in the ground, and with my wand I'll set it 
free." The gold in the West was hidden in the 
Rockies near Pike's Peak, and in California. He 
saw help and wealth in the very clay of the ten 
acres. He dug up the earth and shaped it into 
bricks. He kept his brickyard in service until the 
early '70s. He sold thousands of brick, and what 
he retained he used in the parish school. It was 
brick from his yards that built the original St. 
Teresa's Academy facing on Twelfth Street. With 
them he completed his residence, making it a two- 
story building. He readily found purchasers for 
his product. The financial results made him able 




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Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 139 

to donate $3,000 to the German church of Saints 
Peter and Paul. He gave out of his savings $2,000 
in cash to St. Patrick's parish soon after it was 
started. To the Annunciation parish he contri- 
buted $500, all he could then afford. He never 
solicited for the purchase of Mount St. Mary's 
Cemetery, but bought the forty-four acres and 
paid for them from his savings outside of the brick 
industry. The ten acres v^hich he first intended 
for a cemetery, but because of its rocky soil found 
unsuited for burial purposes, he bought and paid 
for without any call upon the public. This is the 
site of the St. Joseph's Orphan Asylum. 

When the Civil War broke out Father Don- 
nelly had the basement of a large brick school on 
Washington Street completed. Further work on 
the building was out of the question. But with 
the exception of the three days of the battle of 
Westport, the teacher. Miss Mary Virginia Haverty, 
now Mrs. S. Jarboe, never neglected her class one 
day. They held school in the basement. As the 
city's population fell from over six to less than one 
thousand, the school attendance correspondingly 
decreased. With the return of peace the city 
gradually grew, and with it, the Catholic school. 
In 1866 Father Donnelly applied to the mother- 
house at Carondelet for teachers. When he re- 
ceived a favorable response he finished the two 
stories over the basement and built a large brick 
front to the original structure, facing it towards 
12th Street. This was the beginning of the future 
St. Teresa's Academy. Mother Francis was the 
first superior. With her were six other Sisters. 
From their very arrival there were evidences of 
success. In 1869 Mother De Pazzi replaced Mother 
Francis. The city was growing rapidly, and the 
attendance at St. Teresa's Academy was satisfac- 
tory. Local families sent their children there and 




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00 
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Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 141 

the towns of Kansas were represented in the at- 
tendance. Independence, Lexington, Liberty and 
Weston took advantage of the only convent board- 
ing school near by and figured among its patrons. 
Old St. Teresa's Academy has been forced from 
its original site by the enroachment of commerce. 
Its new location is in the most desirable part of 
Kansas City. The new buildings are unsurpassed 
in architectural beauty and modern facilities by 
the most modern female colleges in America. The 
Sisters of St. Joseph in academy and parochial 
work have never lost their hold on the Catholics 
of Kansas City and surrounding territory. The 
St. Joseph Hospital was suggested and aided 
financially by Father Donnelly. It began as a 
seven-room, two-story frame building. Like the 
Academy the hospital yielded to the advance of 
business, and its namesake occupies a command- 
ing site in a resident district, central, and free 
from the noise and influences detrimental to the 
sick. Its style of architecture has been copied in 
various cities of the East. 

The St. Joseph's Orphan Asylum still retains 
its original location, on the ten acres donated by 
Father Donnelly. The Park Board of Kansas City 
has secured the permanency and usefulness of the 
asylum on its original site by swinging around it the 
picturesque boulevard arising from Penn Valley 
Park and named for one of Kansas City's greatest 
citizens, Mr. Karnes, whose loyalty to Kansas City 
and whose ability as a lawyer will live in the his- 
tory of his beloved city. The Sisters of St. Joseph 
teach the school attached to the cathedral, and 
are still on the ten acres of Father Le Roux, where 
they instruct 350 pupils. The other schools under 
their care in Kansas City are: The Redemptorist 
School, where they have over 500 pupils, in con- 
nection with which they teach a commercial course 



142 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

and have a high school department; they have 95 
pupils in the Assumption School; 450 in the school 
of the Holy Rosary; 85 in the school of Our Lady 
of Guadalupe (Mexican) ; and 70 in Sts. Peter 
and Paul's. In the St. Joseph Orphan Asylum 
they teach the orphans and have recently admitted 
children outside the institution. They came here 
with seven members to open Father Donnelly's 
school. Today they have 120 Sisters in Kansas 
City and their pupils in the orphanage, Academy 
and Parish schools number fully 2,000. 

Father Donnelly assisted the Redemptorist 
Fathers to buy their site of ten acres. In 1876 
he invited them to give a two weeks' mission in 
his church. The Very Reverend Father Provincial 
sent Fathers Cook, Enright and Kern in response 
to the request. That mission was truly a religious 
awakening and an impetus in the Catholic Church 
of Kansas City. The Immaculate Conception 
Church was central, with St. Patrick's Church on 
the east and the Church of the Annunciation on 
the west. The church (about 35x60 feet) was not 
large enough for the demands of the parish, but 
after the first Sunday the whole city became ani- 
mated with the spiritual interest aroused in the 
mother parish. The crowds that flocked to the 
Monday evening sermon filled the church to stand- 
ing room. Those who could not enter stood around 
in large numbers, the windows were opened, and 
the outside attendance outnumbered the inside. 
Tuesday evening the schools on 11th and on Wash- 
ington Streets were packed to the doors, while 
the church proper held as many people as on the 
previous night. Every night until the close, three 
missionaries preached in church and the two 
schools. Day after day from the five o'clock Mass 
in the morning until late at night confessions were 
heard. Father Cook, the superior of the mission, 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 143 

seeing what was confronting him, had two more 
missionaries hurried from the Rock Church in St. 
Louis. The number of confessions and Com- 
munions seemed to grow with each day. It was 
a pleasant surprise to the local priests. They did 
not know there were so many Catholics in their 
city. Many men of social and financial standing, 
calling themselves Catholics, whose wives and 
children went to Mass and their duties, were 
avowed Freemasons, Oddfellows, and Knights of 
Pythias. They marched in the parades of these 
societies. It would seem that some special grace 
led these men to attend the mission. They tore 
loose from these forbidden organizations and re- 
sumed their standing in the church. Kansas City 
was booming at that time and many newcomers 
lost no time in making themselves known to their 
respective pastors as a result of the mission. A 
spirit of indifference at least, or perhaps the ex- 
ample on the part of the home people had made 
them believe it was the smart thing to stay away 
from Mass on Sundays. 

The two newer parishes were beneficiaries of 
the mission. The following year Father Cook, with 
Fathers Rosenbauer, McLaughlin and Kern, opened 
a mission in the Annunciation Parish. The Cath- 
olics from the hilltops came down to the West Kan- 
sas City bottoms, and every man and woman in 
that new district attended early Masses and ap- 
proached the Sacraments. The two new school 
buildings took care of the overflow at the spacious 
temporary church. The magnetic zeal of the Re- 
demptorists suggested to Father Donnelly to invite 
them to a permanent residence in Kansas City. 
Nothing was too good for his beloved city. Its 
interests were always uppermost in his heart. The 
growth of the church and the salvation of his people 
were deeper in his every thought and prayer than 



144 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

even the material advancement of the city. He lost 
no time in opening up a correspondence with the 
Very Reverend Provincial, Father Jaeckel, and 
then repeated his wish in a letter to Archbishop 
Kenrick of St. Louis. Father Jaeckel consulted 
the Father General (Father Mauron) at Rome. A 
speedy permission resulted. This was in Novem- 
ber, 1877. The Father Provincial soon came to 
Kansas City to secure a site for the future home. 
Father Donnelly had in mind a desirable place. 
Cook's Pasture seemed to him to be central ; it was 
just inside the city limits. It began at 17th and 
Summit Streets, running to Broadway and south 
to 24th Street. It was rolling ground, in parts 
well shaded by stately oaks. There were many 
acres of rich, loamy soil. The price was reason- 
able. The Father Provincial was much pleased 
and his mind was made up to purchase. 

When Father Jaeckel called on the archbishop 
for approval. His Grace procured a map of Kansas 
City which he had filed away. Cook's Pasture 
being pointed out. His Grace thought the location 
was too near the other city parishes and advised 
that they would go south, near Westport. "Father 
Donnelly is constantly telling me that the growth 
of the city is southward. Besides, as you intend 
to start your work with a school for young postu- 
lants, and will in a short while establish your novi- 
tiate there, I think you will find a much more con- 
venient location on the high land near Westport. 
Cook's Pasture will soon be a downtown neighbor- 
hood." The Provincial shortly afterwards returned 
to Kansas City. Father Donnelly then offered him 
a present of his ten acres near 31st and Jefferson 
Streets. While grateful for such a generous ten- 
der, the Jbather Provincial wished to be on a main 
street or avenue running from Kansas City to 
Westport. The Jefferson Street property was out 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 145 

of the way. In addition, it was high and uneven, 
and had a heavy rock deposit which would entail 
expense in building. With many tnanks he declined 
Father Donnelly's gift of property. Father Don- 
nelly was not disheartened. He admitted that a 
better site lay not many yards away. It was level 
and on tne very street running south to Westport. 
He would contribute to the purchase of the more 
desirable property. The Mastin Brothers, then the 
leading Kansas City bauKers, owned a large farm 
south and east of Kansas City. A corner covering 
ten acres facing north and extending southward 
along the Westport road was for sale, the first 
partition of the farm, and its most desirable part. 
The deed of purchase was drawn up and signed 
before tne Provincial returned to St. Louis, inis 
property was just what Father JaecKel wantea. 
It was conveniently located, without hill or quarry, 
about two miles from Kansas City, and not very 
far from the old town of Westport. The price 
was five thousand dollars for ten acres. 

How proud Father Donnelly was when he 
learned from the Father Provincial a few days 
afterwards that it was the intention of the con- 
gregation to use the property for the home of their 
missionary Fathers and for a novitiate and college 
and seminary for their students and novices. "What 
an honor to Kansas City!" he would exclaim. **One 
of the best known and most efficient religious or- 
ganizations in the Church coming to Kansas City 
to supply missions and missionaries to the whole 
country from New Orleans to Detroit and from 
St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean! Kansas City is 
at last on the Map of Religion in the United States. 
This was something I hardly dared dream of in 
sleeping or wakeful moments." 

The date of the purchase was December 3rd, 
1877. A two-story building with a high stone base- 



146 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

ment was started in early spring. The cornerstone 
of the structure was laid by Father Donnelly on 
the first Sunday of March. Reverend Father Cook, 
C. S. S. R., preached. Fathers Dunn, Dalton, 
Curran (the assistant at Immaculate Conception 
Church), John Ryan (assistant at Annunciation), 
two Benedictine Fathers from Atchison, three Re- 
demptorist Fathers from St. Louis, and Father T. 
Fitzgerald of Independence, Missouri, took part in 
the ceremony. A large concourse of Catholics from 
the three parishes of the city and from neighbor- 
ing towns in Kansas was present. The day was 
unusually fine and the sun shone as on a day in 
May. 

The structure was finished and on May 28th, 
1878, was solemnly blessed by the Father Pro- 
vincial, assisted by the two resident priests. Fathers 
Faivre and Luette. Father Faivre was Superior. 
A lay brother was the third member of the com- 
munity. Improvements on the grounds and the 
construction of an annex made the new home for 
the novices and students of the Province. The 
transfer of the novices and students from the orig- 
inal home at Chatawa, Mississippi, to Kansas City 
took place in January, 1879. Father Firley, the 
Master of Novices, escorted the young men to their 
new residence. He held this same position for 
many years and was local Rector in Kansas City 
and afterwards Provincial of the Congregation. 

The Redemptorist Fathers opened their spa- 
cious community Chapel to the few Catholics south 
of the city limits. The little mission at Westport 
was practically closed from January, 1875, and in 
time became succursal to St. Patrick's Parish. Then 
it was put under the charge of the Redemptorists. 
Sick calls were attended by the Redemptorists as 
far south and east as Hickman Mills and the River 
Blue. This was done at the request of the pastor 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 147 

of St. Patrick's Church, whose growing parish made 
it impracticable to go so far away from his home. 

A new duty came to the Redemptorists early 
in 1880. In January of that year Father Donnelly 
opened the Orphan Asylum on what is now Jef- 
ferson and 31st Streets. He handed over to them 
the chaplaincy of the new St. Joseph's Orphanage. 

In March, 1881, the Redemptorists were re- 
quested to attend once a month the missions at 
Norborne, Parkville and Liberty. Father Beil was 
assigned to these new charges. In 1882 the new 
convent of the Sisters of the Poor was added to 
the charge of the Redemptorists. On February 
21st, 1888, the Redemptorist Parish was estab- 
lished. 

Many of these original novices at Kansas City 
have since held high positions in their congrega- 
tion. At least three of them have been Fathers 
Provincial, and the Rectors at St. Louis, New Or- 
leans and other places in their western Province 
made their novitiate in the Kansas City home. 
The House of Students was in time transferred to 
Kansas City. Newer and larger buildings followed 
as a necessity. The courses immediately prepara- 
tory to the priesthood were for years taught here 
and the number of priests ordained in the Kansas 
City house is very large. Almost from the very 
start the Fathers residing at Kansas City went 
forth on the work of mission-giving. Frequently 
they have given missions on the Pacific Coast, from 
San Francisco to San Diego on the south, and to 
Portland, and northward into the British posses- 
sions in Canada, eastward through Salt Lake, Den- 
ver, and the towns in the Rocky Mountains. In 
every diocese west and south of Kansas City their 
missions are recorded in the work they have done 
for God and humanity. Like St. Paul they travel 
everywhere and preach everywhere. Time and 




Exterior and interior of Redemptorist Church 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 149 

again St. Paul and New Orleans have been spirit- 
ually benefited by the Redemptorist Fathers from 
the Kansas City house. The churches of St. Louis, 
Chicago, Indianapolis, Memphis and Alabama are 
the beneficiaries of the zeal and efficiency of St. 
Alphonsus' Rectorate at Kansas City. 

Father Donnelly's zeal for the salvation of 
souls is far-reaching in the work of his chosen 
Redemptorists, who gave preparatory training to 
their subjects at Kansas City. Their efficiency 
has won recognition wherever they have labored. 
Their novitiate is now at De Soto, their house for 
preparatory training is in St. Louis County, and 
the seminary for the closing studies before enter- 
ing the Sanctuary is on one of the picturesque lakes 
of Wisconsin. The changes that time and oppor- 
tunity demanded have consigned the Kansas City 
home of St. Alphonsus to mission and parish duties. 
The Fathers here are as ever in requisition for 
missions, everywhere far and near. Their parish 
work is efficiency itself. Their church structure 
is the largest in the city. When material and labor 
knew no such prices as they command today, St. 
Alphonsus' Church cost over $200,000. Their 
schools number over 500 pupils, and are academic 
as well as preparatory. New and larger structures 
will soon follow the pressing demands. The Church 
attendance packs the spacious aisles and fills the 
pews Sunday after Sunday. The number of con- 
fessions heard is very large. In 1920 the number 
of communions exceeded 220,000. 



CHAPTER XVII. 
FATHER DONNELLY AS A LABORING MAN. 



w 



'HEN Father Donnelly began his brickmak- 
ing, after the bricks were molded and car- 
ried out to dry, night after night he 
watched the moon and the sky, and when 
heavy clouds portended a coming rain, would not 
wait to call the yard laborers from their slumbers, 
but in his barrow and on boards would carry the 
bricks to a sheltered place. When the rain ceased 
he helped carry them back to the sun's rays. In 
his brickyard he wore the overalls of the laborer. 
He laughed heartily when passersby or strangers 
would mistake him for a workman. He was pleased 
to hear it bandied about that he was one of the 
hired men in the church brickyard. The church 
property on the east side and from the south to 
the west limits, was graded down to the street level 
by converting the elevated parts into brick. He 
called this result good business and the saving of 
hundreds of dollars. The extreme west end of the 
church property to the north was what he called 
the Rocky Point. Large bulging tiers of rock went 
up fifteen feet high. Between times and when his 
work in the brickyards was easing up, he turned 
to what he called the ''Rocky Point." The small 
and the softer stones he sold to contractors who 
were riprapping the Missouri River. Some of the 
stone would make good lime. He built kilns just 
as he had seen them abroad. Yard after yard of 
stone crumbled and fell in flakes or chunks under 
his eyes. He called this employment ''working at 
my old trade." Father Donnelly had the habit of 
his countrymen of always portraying the things at 
home as better than the same in America, "but my 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 151 

lime was never excelled at home or abroad," was a 
daily boast. He ought to know. In this, as in any- 
thing else he prided himself on, it was wise never 
to contradict him, *'for though defeated, he would 
argue still." Builders and contractors said his lime 
and brick were of a very high grade. 

When he had disposed of the top ledges of the 
quarry he came to a hard white vein of good build- 
ing stone. He found a ready market for this to be 
used in facings and steps. Here he proved himself 
a competent stone cutter. Oftentimes he could be 
seen by the side of the mechanic with chisel and 
mallet cutting down and facing large slabs of this 
native stone. Men working by his side many a time 
allowed their curiosity and astonishment to get the 
upper hand and would say, "Where did you learn 
this trade?" His reply was the Irishman's; it did 
not afford any information. He would respond, 
**Sure, I had to work for my living when I was 
young and hardy like yourselves." Day after day 
Father Donnelly hammered and chiseled alongside 
the well-known contractors, Bishop and Hughes, 
who passed most favorably on his skill and used to 
say they could not surpass him. The stone tracings 
in the circular front window of St. Benedict's 
Church at Atchison were done on stone from Father 
Donnelly's quarries and with his help. 




CHAPTER XVIII. 
MORE LETTERS. 

December, 1879. 

Dear Father Dalton, Editor Western Banner: 

OUR repeated invitations to contribute to 
the columns of your paper are gratefully 
received and I now comply. As you have 
suggested for my topic something historical 
of the early days of my missionary life I will tell 
your readers some of the few things I can now re- 
call. I was the third duly appointed resident pastor 
of Kanzas — it was simply Kanzas — no "City" affix 
when I came to Independence. Let me name the 
two resident pastors previous to my appointment. 
The first was Rev. Father Le Roux, who purchased 
the church site. Father Saulnier was the next resi- 
dent pastor. He remained here only one year. I 
was pastor at Independence when he left here. 
Archbishop Kenrick wrote me to take back Kanzas 
as one of my missions. In 1857 Father Denis Ken- 
nedy was made resident pastor and a few days after 
coming here exchanged with me for Independence. 
From that time I was really pastor here. It was 
indeed at my suggestion that his Grace raised Kan- 
zas once again to a parish. While in charge here 
I built the Immaculate Conception Church, facing 
on what is now Broadway, midway between Elev- 
enth and Twelfth Streets. The little log church was 
erected by Father Le Roux. It was a log structure 
15x32 feet with two windows on each side, and an 
entrance facing east. It rested on a stone founda- 
tion. The style of architecture, if it might be so 
dignified, was identically like the style of the orig- 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 153 

inal churches at St. Louis, Missouri, and the ones 
at Lexington, Liberty and St. Joseph. They were 
really chapels and had no patron saints for many 
years. Like the others, it was too small for any- 
thing resembling a steeple on top, and when I ar- 
rived it did not even have a cross above the entrance. 
I placed a small wooden cross on it. Outside, on 
the east side about six or eight feet away and about 
two feet back from the line of the front of the 
church, was a roughly-shaped belfry built of heavy 
supports or beams, nearly a foot in diameter. It 
was sixteen feet in height ; rough pine boards made 
a roof to screen the bell from the weather and I 
suppose to keep the sound of the bell from an up- 
ward tendency, for its warning notes were intended 
to be towards the earth where they would reach 
the ears of the people. Resting on the roof of 
the belfry was a large cross, out of all proportion 
with church and belfry. The bell was a gift from 
the first pastor. Father Le Roux, after he left here 
and while he was pastor of Cahokia or some little 
French settlement opposite St. Louis. This bell I 
gave to the Sisters of St. Teresa's Convent. It is 
still used to call the Sisters to their various duties. 
It also serves the purpose of arousing me from my 
slumbers at five o'clock every morning. The sound 
and shape of the bell resemble the steamboat bells 
on the boats plying the Missouri and Mississippi 
Rivers. 

The walls and flat ceiling of the log church 
were plastered with a rough finish. Besides the 
Stations of the Cross, there was back of the altar 
a painting in oil of Christ Crucified. On the out- 
side of the small Sanctuary hung two oil paintings, 
one of some Saint Bishop, standing, with mitre on 
and holding a crozier. On the right-hand side of 
the bishop was a true picture of his own mitred 
head resting on a platter, this head being the 



154 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

bishop's head decapitated. The whole effect was 
that the good bishop was in a trance and saw where 
his head was soon to be. The picture was of the 
Spanish school of art and looked as if it had been 
cut out of a large painting. It was loaned the 
church by the Chouteau family. The other picture 
on the opposite side of the altar was of a martyr 
being flagellated. The altar piece, Christ on the 
Cross, and the picture of the martyr, were surely 
of the realistic school, which was in striking con- 
trast to the art displayed on the canvas of the 
bishop with the head on and off. The history of 
these pictures was that they were brought here 
from Mexico by some of the traders who traversed 
plains and mountains back and forth from Mexico. 
They were either purchased or seized from some of 
the missions in Mexico, or were quietly taken away 
and found a home in Kansas City. 

Two rows of unpainted pews lined either side 
of the one aisle of the church. A few kneelers were 
to be found here and there in front of pews. Some 
boards nailed together with a latticed opening in 
the center, was the confessional. On week days 
Father Saulnier used the church for a school. He 
was the teacher. Among other branches, he taught 
French and English. My school at Independence 
antedated the one at Kansas City a few months. 
I had to help me a Miss Mullins, a member of one 
of our best Catholic families. 

The first historic notice of the log church is 
made in the deed of transfer given by Father Le 
Roux to Bishop Rosatti of St. Louis. In the deed is 
the mention of a small two-room log house. I often 
found this hut a convenient place to sit in dur- 
ing my stay in going and coming from Independ- 
ence. I usually read my office in the west 
room. Other missionary priests would while away 
a few hours resting in the east room. The west 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 155 

room was comfortable in a rain or in cold weather, 
for it had a fireplace and a few kitchen con- 
veniences. The rooms were too small to be a living 
place. It was never Father Le Roux's intention 
to make it a residence. I and all the other priests 
attending here stayed over night and sometimes 
for days in the hospitable dwelling of Mr. and Mrs. 
Chouteau, with the Jarboe family, or at the Guinotte 
home. Father Le Roux lived with the Chouteaus 
during his stay here. It was his home; it was the 
home of the Jesuit missionaries from St. Mary's 
in the Pottawatomie country. 'The priest's home 
in early days" is a misnomer. The hut served the 
purpose principally of an outside sacristy, con- 
venient for a sitting place while the priests were 
waiting for confessions on Saturdays. The inter- 
stices between the logs were never properly filled. 
In fact, it was impossible to fill them, as the logs 
were so uneven and the knot holes so numerous. 
The wood .was decayed. It had been part of some 
hovel somewhere before used here. To the mis- 
sionary, accustomed to sleeping in the open, the 
log cabin would be a misery and would give him 
rheumatism. 

The church and cabin and ten acres were all 
given and paid for by Father Le Roux out of his 
own funds. He had some private means when he 
came here and had no expensive habits. I never 
had the pleasure of meeting Father Le Roux, he 
was gone before my time. He paid a short visit 
to his old parishioners late in 1844 — in September, 
after the great flood. He did little missionary work 
while here, contenting himself with following up 
some Trois Rivieres Catholics who were working 
at the various Chouteau agencies, or who were 
engaged in hunting and trapping. La Liberte, 
Pierre Chouteau, and those who were here in his 
day, lauded him for his piety and refinement of 



156 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

mind and manner. Father Lutz spent a few days 
here in the early spring of 1844. Father Saulnier, 
my immediate predecessor, was from Canada, 
where he served as pastor near Quebec. The West 
did not appeal to him. He was well spoken of, 
and my acquaintance with him made me respect 
him highly. He had all the enthusiasm of the 
French pioneer priest. He opened up new books 
of marriages and baptisms. Those records from 
the coming of Father Le Roux, some entries made 
by Father Lutz and some passing priests, were de- 
posited for safety in the Chouteau warehouse on 
the levee. The records were swept down the 
swollen river with the warehouse. A few leaves 
with baptism entries were found afterwards in the 
Chouteau home and were handed me. The records 
made by the Jesuit Fathers were taken home with 
them to their mission house at St. Mary's. Fathers 
Ward and Stuntebeck, rectors of St. Mary's Col- 
lege, informed me that the records made here and 
taken to St. Mary's are in a good state of preserva- 
tion, at their flourishing college in Pottawatomie 
County. 

This communication is entirely too long. I 
don't write as easily as I used to, and the joints 
of my fingers do not work as smoothly as when 
I was young. Another letter for next week's Ban- 
ner. Age has its penalties. 

Bernard Donnelly. 

December, 1879. 
Dear Editor: 

Let me correct my closing remark in last 
week's letter. I said I was old. Give me the Irish- 
man's privilege of speaking twice, the second time 
to correct the first speech. I am not old. I am a 
Donnelly. My father died but the other day, and 
he was 112 years old. It was an accident that 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 157 

killed him or he would be living still. 

But to the task you have imposed on me, per- 
taining to the early days at Kansas City. I often 
thought when you would ask me questions about 
old times that you meant to make a history of the 
information. But now you make me the writer as 
you win me over to be the narrator. Who knows? 
If you see it worth while you may make me a hero 
of a biography. 

But to the task you have laid on me: My 
memory is full of the heroic sacrifices of the Jesuit 
missionaries in these parts. My soul is full of 
admiration of the work of God done by those good 
men. They certainly imbibed the spirit of their 
great founder, St. Ignatius. The greater glory of 
God is their aim and their inspiration. St. Ignatius 
did not court, does not take, the drone, the coward, 
or the brainless. Brain, brawn, and zeal make up 
the Jesuit of today. A military fire to do or die 
bums within them. They know something about 
everjrthing and a great deal about many things. 
I read of the Jesuits before I ever saw them. I 
found them learned in the sciences and elegant in 
the languages. I read of the elaborate plans and 
the forty years of deep study with which they pre- 
pared to enter China and foreign countries. I 
heard them tell of their brethren, and others, too, 
relate of the heroism and greatness of their mis- 
sionaries in China and Japan, and the world over. 
But I have lived to see them with my own eyes 
and I know the zeal and fearlessness of their 
members in other days survive to as great extent 
in the De Smet, the Eysvogels, the Verreydt, the 
Galliand, of Missouri, Kansas and the Rocky 
Mountains. They have been an inspiration and 
an impetus to me in my territory. They have been 
my friends, my advisers, and my models. I could 
write for hours of what I know they did in these 



158 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

parts. They have been the builders-up of religion 
from St. Louis along the Missouri, across the 
Rockies to the far-off Pacific Coast. They never 
lived here as residents, but their regular visits here 
kept religion among the Catholic pioneers fishing 
for a livelihood in the rivers and trapping and hunt- 
ing on the plains and mountains. They never 
passed my poor home without visiting me and en- 
couraging me by word and example. They 
cheered me when I was despondent, and they more 
than once used their credit and their own scanty 
means when I was out of pocket and hungry. This 
poor tribute does not do ample justice to the debt 
I owe them. They built up the Faith here and 
organized the church and made life possible for 
the secular priests. When Kansas City began to 
build up parishes, I more than once wrote the su- 
periors in St. Louis to start a church here. They 
told me they could not come. The church's per- 
manency will never be assured until the Jesuits 
come back to this, the scene of their early efforts. 
I have often prayed to live to see a church and a 
college here under their administration. You, the 
young editor, are but a boy in years — you will see 
your teachers of St. Louis University your co- 
laborers here. The Jesuits, the Eysvogels, Ver- 
reydt, De Smet, etc., baptized, married and 
preached here. So did Verhaegen, Hoecken, 
Aelen, and many others of the Society. 

The Lazarist Fathers, my old professors at 
the Barrens, hunted the stray Catholic from the 
Barrens to the Territory and to Texas. Father 
Tom Burke and another priest whose name I can- 
not recall, were requested by the bishop to traverse 
west Missouri and to report to him where he would 
be justified in opening up missions for diocesan 
priests. They left the Barrens in the year 1845 
on horseback to go to the extreme southwest por- 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 159 

tion of Missouri. They could find but few grow- 
ing districts where a priest could live. The scat- 
tered inhabitants here and there were Protestants 
from Kentucky and Tennessee. At times they 
came across a Catholic who was so used to living 
away from priest and church that he expressed 
himself indifferent to the coming of one of his 
clergymen. He feared the priest's presence would 
arouse the bigotry of the neighbors. Deepwater, 
one of the Jesuit missions, was a promising loca- 
tion. The Catholics were made up exclusively of 
a German colony and they were well contented 
with the services of Jesuits from St. Mary's, and 
afterwards from the mission at Osage under the 
supervision of Father Schoenmacher. Independ- 
ence looked well and promised a future. The next 
village that met their eyes was Kanzas on the Kan- 
zas and Missouri Rivers. They returned to St. 
Louis after my arrival. I was raised to the priest- 
hood in 1845. I requested the Bishop to permit 
me to visit the pastor of Old Mines for a few 
days before sending me on my mission. He kindly 
granted the request. That very day I started for 
Old Mines. I borrowed a horse from a friend in 
St. Louis and rode there. The next day after my 
arrival a letter was handed me from his Grace, to 
go without delay and open up a parish at Inde- 
pendence. I mounted my horse and returned to 
St. Louis, called on the bishop (he was not made 
archbishop until 1847) and with my letter of ap- 
pointment I hurried to take the steamboat which 
left St. Louis that afternoon at four o'clock. I 
found the boat loaded with freight and over two 
hundred passengers. Some of them were heading 
for California, others were going anywhere west 
to grow up with the country. Gamblers, who plied 
their avocation on every boat heading north, south 
and west from St. Louis, were on board. They 



160 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

were the most prosperous-looking passengers on 
the boat. They could be found at the long tables 
on the upper cabin all day except while meals were 
being served. After supper they resumed their 
games at the tables and played late into the night 
and possibly early in the morning. They were 
flashily dressed with a great display of watch 
chains, and their finger rings were valuable with 
settings of diamonds. They were always quiet and 
well behaved. They evidently did not seek out 
their victims, for men flocked to the cleared tables 
without invitation. If there were any losers, and 
there undoubtedly were, the losers were game and 
kept quiet. After seven days we touched the land- 
ing at Kanzas. Although we were impeded in our 
progress by sand bars three different times, the 
trip consumed the average time. 

I found Father Burke awaiting my arrival, 
for he knew a priest was coming. I carried a let- 
ter of introduction to Messrs. Chouteau and Jarboe, 
Catholic merchants on the levee. Independence 
was my destination. Father Burke, his companion 
and I procured the loan of a horse through the 
kindness of the two merchants and in less than 
three hours from my arrival were on our way to 
my new home. We dismounted at a livery stable 
and handed over our steeds to the care of the man 
in charge. I then faced a little hotel or boarding 
house where we registered. That evening I was 
introduced to three different Catholic families, 
among them Mr. Davy and his sons and their 
wives. Mr. Davy was a very wealthy merchant 
and later one of my most generous parishioners. 
They all looked at me as if in astonishment: A 
priest to reside in Independence? Why, they had 
been satisfactorily attended occasionally by the 
Jesuits. They hardly believed a pastor could get 
a support. 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 161 

A few days, and I was nicely ensconced in a 
well-furnished room in the house of a newcomer 
to Independence, a Catholic, named Gilson, from 
St. Louis. 

A town was growing on the river a few miles 
away which was a "feeder" and landing place for 
Independence. The people told me that a rivalry 
for future greatness was growing between Inde- 
pendence and Kanzas here and in the county. 

I found less than twenty families in the town 
and immediately surrounding farms. But there 
was a vast territory from here to the end of my 
charge. I was told to visit at intervals from the 
Kaw to Arkansas. There was church property here 
willed to Independence by Bishop Rosatti. I finally, 
after many appeals, was able to purchase an aban- 
doned carpenter shop for a church. When I had 
the little church ready to occupy — it was two feet 
longer than the church given by Father Le Roux 
at Kanzas — I put up a two-room cottage for my- 
self. I used the church for a school until I could 
erect the one-story school house. As I could not 
give all my time to Independence, I hired a teacher. 
Miss Mullins, who was very competent. 

Some years later I discovered great dissatis- 
faction among the Catholics at Kansas City. The 
church building did not suit them and the city was 
growing away from it. For the second time they 
petitioned the archbishop to sell the ten-acre lot 
and the church erected by Father Le Roux and 
put the price in a fifty-foot lot and unused build- 
ing. I offered a compromise. I suggested that 
they rent an empty one-story frame house near 
what is now Cherry and Second Streets. This 
quieted them. We temporarily closed the log church 
and had services in the rented building. 

When I saw my appeals meeting a response, I 
began the brick building on the east line of the 



162 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

property facing Broadway. We had the corner- 
stone laid on the first Sunday of May, 1856. The 
Definition and Promulgation of the Doctrine of the 
Immaculate Conception gave a happy and timely 
name for the new church. It was named the 
Immaculate Conception Church. The name St. 
Francis Regis was not given by Father Le Roux 
to the log church. Father Le Roux never gave it 
a patron. It was called by him and his people the 
log church; that is the title given in his descrip- 
tion when he included it in his deed to the bishop 
of St. Louis. The name of St. Francis Regis was 
given it by Father De Smet when the mission was 
handed over to the Jesuits. Father De Smet on 
his way from the far West stopped over with me 
for a few days. I met him at the Kanzas City 
levee. After a short visit at the home of the Chou- 
teau family we rode up the hills to the church site. 
It was while sitting in the little church cottage 
that he told me about the origin of its name. He 
smiled as he related that the thought occurred to 
him that the chapel needed a patron and he could 
not think of a better saint to watch over its des- 
tinies, so he christened it St. Francis Regis. He 
said he informed the bishop of St. Louis and the 
Vice-Provincial, who both said, "Now the church 
is complete — it has a name and a good one." 

Westport was always a concern of mine. I 
knew it when it was a waiting place for the thou- 
sands going southwest to Santa Fe, and to the 
mountains, and the gold fields of California, and 
Pike's Peak. Like Independence, Westport was a 
plateau. It was higher than the hills back of Kan- 
sas City. But I presume Nature had done too much 
for Westport and left a great deal for the people 
to do at Kansas City. Westport is no larger today 
than it was in the '50s and '40s. The only future 
I see for it is that Kansas City will throw its arms 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 163 

around it in its strides southward and eastward 
and annex it. It will make a beautiful residence 
district for the coming giant city of the West. 
The Jesuits said Mass out at Westport, as did many- 
priests traveling to the new diocese of Santa Fe. 
Masses were usually said in tents, occasionally in 
the home of Mr. Dillon. Westport was for many 
years a pleasant resting place for the priests and 
people awaiting Uncle Sam's arrival to take them 
under his protection as they wandered through the 
country of hostile enemies. It was only a few years 
ago that Bishop Lamy of Santa Fe, while traveling 
in a cavalcade of ox-carts and on ponies, was at- 
tacked by the Indians. He had with him eight or 
ten young priests, and a number of Sisters of Char- 
ity from Cincinnati, going to open up schools. The 
bishop had had experience of what might happen 
and made provision for the possible contingency 
He had purchased shotguns and ammunition at 
Cincinnati. While he waited at Westport he prac- 
ticed shooting with his young clerical friends. He 
told them what would likely come. "The Indians 
will like you better if you stand your ground and 
shoot back. If you run away they will follow and 
shoot you sure." The Indians did attack them. 
The bishop formed the wagons into breastworks 
and did some straight shooting, and finally sent 
the Indians flying to their tents and hiding places. 
One of the young Sisters died on the battlefield. 
She was suffering from chronic heart disease and 
dropped dead at the first volley. 

There never was a chapel or church at West- 
port, and the two occasions I said Mass there I 
officiated in the home of Mr. Dillon, a local mer- 
chant in the harness business. The Archbishop of 
Santa Fe and Bishop Maschboeuf, his former Vicar- 
General, now Bishop of Denver, and the priests 
escorting them said Mass under tents. They made 



164 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

the same use of them frequently as they journeyed 
home. On one occasion I visited the bishop of 
Santa Fe as he tarried at Westport. He had with 
him four elegantly attired priests who left their 
native France to do missionary work in New Mex- 
ico. I observed them going about in the best ap- 
parel of Paris. They wore silk stockings and costly 
leggings. Their coats were of rich material and 
their hats were high and of the latest New York 
style. Their rest here gave them a chance to 
parade in their very best. It was their last chance. 
Perhaps it was the shine of their hats and the 
richness of their attire that drove the Indians to 
make the murderous attack. Many a man I saw 
approaching the far West dressed in a metropoli- 
tan's finest, who in a little while was glad to wear 
the red shirt and belt and leather pantaloons. 

I purchased in my own name the first piece 
of property in Westport intended for church pur- 
poses. I have deeded it over to the archbishop. 
On this property is a one-story building occupied 
as a residence. The parlor is used for a chaoel on 
Sundays for saying Mass. I witnessed myself, and 
every priest who ever officiated there on Sunday 
tells me, that the little room is never filled. I am 
confident a church, probably churches, will dot the 
grown-up Westport. Kansas City has to grow; its 
natural and sure tendency will be to the south. 
Kansas City will make a ward or many wards out 
of Westport. 

Father Halpin was an ex-Jesuit who left the 
Society and was appointed my assistant. He took 
the lay of the land and soon went to St. Louis and 
came back pastor of a new parish on the east 
of Main Street — St. Patrick's. Father Archer suc- 
ceeded him, and then came Father Dunn. The 
first site of the new St. Patrick's was sold and a 
new and more desirable one selected. I had the 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 165 

honor of laying the cornerstone on the new site. 
I laid the cornerstone of the new church and mon- 
astery of the Redemptorists, out near Westport, 
also the cornerstone of the new and spacious orphan 
asylum. The Annunciation Parish was started by 
its present young pastor on the first Sunday of 
July, 1872. A hospital on Seventh and Prospect 
has just been opened. A large graveyard is bought 
and paid for and has been in use for nearly two 
years. People say it is too far out. The time 
will come when they will say Mount St. Mary's 
Cemetery is too far inside the limits, that it should 
be closed and another one procured. I will not live 
to see it. Kansas City in church and civic pros- 
pects has a wonderful future. 

My fingers are getting stiff from writing and 
I am becoming garrulous, even if I am playing 
historian. 

Yours Anon, 

B. Donnelly. 

THIRD LETTER OF FATHER DONNELLY. 
Rev. Editor: 

It may be of interest to your readers and help- 
ful to the future historian of the Church in and 
around Kansas City to give the names of the 
priests who have officiated at Westport. Father 
Gross, the first pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul's 
Church, attended Westport every second Sunday. 
He did so at the order of the archbishop. In fact 
he made his home out there for a few weeks but 
did his Sunday work at Kansas City, saying Mass 
here for his people and giving them opportunity 
to receive the Sacraments. Father Muehlsiepen, 
the Vicar General for the Germans in the St. Louis 
archiepiscopal see, did not approve of his living 
at Westport and came here and induced him to 
return to Kansas City. Father Halpin's assistant 



166 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

at St. Patrick's then said Mass at Westport for a 
few months, when Father Michael Walsh of St. 
Louis was appointed resident pastor. He re- 
mained in charge for six months. He organized 
the congregation and had excavations for a church 
50x120 feet when he was called back to St. Louis 
to assist my old friend, Father Henry of St. Law- 
rence O'Toole's parish. The successor to Father 
Walsh was Father James Douherty, who for some 
little time had been assistant to Father Hennessy 
at St. Joseph. On the consecration of the latter 
as Bishop Hennessy of Dubuque, he became pastor. 
When St. Joseph was made a see Father Douherty 
acted as rector for a few months. He soon re- 
quested that he be allowed to return to the arch- 
diocese. It was then he came to Westport. He 
started out by reducing the size of the contem- 
plated church at Westport. While living here he 
accepted my hospitality. By assiduous efforts he 
raised considerable money collecting along the 
Fort Scott Railroad among the men working on its 
construction. He finished the walls and roof of 
the church. On the tenth of January, 1872, he 
was made pastor of the Annunciation Church in 
St. Louis. He reported a debt on the Westport 
Church of $3,500.00 — another weight placed on 
my shoulders. I had bought and paid for the 
Westport Church property myself and now the 
creditors looked to me to pay this debt. As the 
archbishop refused to send another pastor there I 
felt this new obligation was mine and assumed it. 
After repeated letters to St. Louis I was told that 
the young pastor of the Annunciation Church in 
the West Bottoms would be given an assistant who 
would at least say Mass every Sunday at Westport. 
By way of digression let me say that the Annun- 
ciation pastor, our editor of the Banner, was liv- 
ing on Liberty Street in a room 8x10. He divided 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 167 

up with his assistant, and had at least the comfort 
of youth and health and pluck. His assistant was 
Father Michael McKin, many years his senior and 
partly broken in health. We three formed a com- 
bination and went soliciting along the railroads 
and among some of the well to do people of Kan- 
sas City. In a little while we had the debt down 
to $2,500.00. I then paid off that sum, leaving 
me little of my savings. After Father McKin left 
here to become the first pastor of Joplin, another 
assistant alternated with his rector. Father Dalton, 
in visiting Westport. When in 1874 Father Dal- 
ton gave up the Westport charge, it was handed 
over to Father Dunn at St. Patrick's. His assistant, 
Father Cooney, was regular in his work there. 
Once more and for the last time it was decided 
Westport was too far to work in, and its connec- 
tion with Kansas City ceased. All this time, the 
new church was untenanted. Father Douherty 
left it without doors, windows or floors, so Mass 
was always said in the long-drawn-out one-story 
frame building. I repeat, Westport will yet be 
heard from. The Redemptorist Fathers are not 
far away. They have opened up their convenient 
chapel for Westport and the surrounding territory. 
When the Redemptorists came here it was with the 
understanding that their time and their buildings 
would be solely for the education and training of 
young men for their congregation. Their grounds 
are large and afford health and recreation for 
their evergrowing number of young students and 
professors. The advance of civic progress will in 
a while demand a more secluded site for the novi- 
tiate and house of studies and their work will be the 
labor of a great parish. 

For thirty-five years I have found good diges- 
tion and plenty to do inside the lines of home and 
parochial duty. My farthest trip in all this time 



168 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

was to journey to Quincy to the Monastery of the 
Franciscan Fathers where there was a reunion of 
my classmates at the Barrens, and when the few 
of us left celebrated our Silver Jubilee. Just three 
responded to the call — every one of the others 
had gone to his last home. I reached Quincy about 
eight o'clock in the morning and saying farewell 
to my two old comrades I left for Kansas City at 
seven o'clock that same evening. I attended two 
annual retreats. I was present at the consecration 
of Father Ryan as Bishop Co-adjutor to Arch- 
bishop Kenrick. Three times I was present at the 
retreats of the priests of the St. Louis diocese in 
the house of my old professors, the Lazarist 
Fathers, in the Church of St. Vincent de Paul. 
During those early years I did not hug the com- 
forts of my little cabins here and at Independence. 
Three times on horseback I traversed the almost 
solitary country from Jackson County to the 
Arkansas line. I did not find many Catholics on 
those trips, and they, as a body, seemed to have 
grown cold in the Faith. I have learned that 
Kansas City will soon be the home of a bishop. A 
passing bishop going home from St. Louis where 
the bishops of the Province had gathered to lay 
out a new diocese showed me the map of the new 
see. Except for Father Hammil's parish and 
Sedalia and the mission on the eastern side of the 
contemplated diocese, my mission covers the area 
of the future bishop and his priests. 

After three complete circuits of my missionary 
field I grew serious and began to feel that if life 
is worth living a man ought to take care of his 
health, that long journeys with very indifferent 
results, if any, and days and nights of exposure to 
the weather and sleeping on the highways with 
my saddle for a pillow were not good for men of 
my increasing years. The gentle pastor of Deep- 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 169 

water, and the good-natured Father Hammil, and 
Father Walsh of Jefferson City, kindly relieved 
me of any more such endurances. I had plenty 
to do at Kansas City and Independence. 

Although a poor visitor myself I had the ex- 
treme pleasure of entertaining many persons. The 
great Senator Benton did me the honor of a call 
while in Independence. Governor Gilpin who in- 
vited the Senator to Jackson County and who lis- 
tened to his predictions of Kansas City's certain 
greatness, was my neighbor in Independence. He 
was a man of culture, well read in the Latin and 
Greek classics. He spoke French fluently and had 
traveled abroad extensively. He lived in the West 
and loved its plains and mountains. He predicted 
that the Territory of Kanzas which fed thousands 
and thousands of buffaloes and other wild animals 
would yet feed and make rich thousands of farm- 
ers and commercial men. He climbed the moun- 
tains of Colorado before the gold mines of Pike's 
Peak were opened up, and he wrote of the healing 
balmy climate of that country, advertising it 
everywhere. He afterwards held a position of 
honor under the government in that mountain land 
before it became a state. No man before or since 
predicted so lavishly of Kansas City. Many an 
evening and late in the night he visited me in my 
humble home and I returned his calls. His well 
stocked library was at my disposal and from its 
shelves I conned much useful lore and renewed my 
acquaintance with many loved authors. General 
Harney, when the quiet of peace would permit it, 
would turn his face to his St. Louis home, always 
dropping in to see me and tell me about the In- 
dians, and keep me posted on the politics of Wash- 
ington, and the country at large. He was a man 
of commanding figure, over six feet four inches 
tall. He was the ranking officer in the army close 



170 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

to General Scott. He knew the Civil War was com- 
ing and regretted it very much J last saw him 
after President Lincoln ordered him to St. Louis. 
Senator Lane of Kansas was my friend, as was 
General Curtis, and good General 'Tap'/ Price. I 
learned much about the war when it was in pro- 
gress from those men. I was on the battlefield of 
Westport during three days of conflict. They al- 
lowed me all the privileges of the scene of cam- 
age. I was the chaplain on both sides, with writ- 
ten permission to visit their wounded and help 
bury their dead. I found hospitals in Westport, 
Independence and Kansas City for the wounded in 
the homes of the kindly people of those little 
towns. Archbishop Kenrick visitea me when he 
came for confirmation. Once too, when he called 
on Father Meurs at Glasgow, and when he dedi- 
cated the new Cathedral at Leavenworth. Bishop 
Barron paid me the courtesy of a two days' visit 
on his way to St. Mary's mission, and once when 
he confirmed in the old log church. He was a very 
learned man, a priest of Philadelphia, and suc- 
ceeded Peter Richard Kenrick as rector and pro- 
fessor of theology in the seminary at Philadelphia. 
He was consecrated Bishop of Liberia. His sojourn 
there impaired his health, and he returned to the 
United States on his resignation. He aided Bishop 
Francis P. Kenrick in his laborious work in Penn- 
sylvania. He then came to St. Louis where he did 
the work of an assistant bishop, doing all the visita- 
tions and confirmations outside that city. He paid 
visits to the Jesuit missions at Kickapoo, near 
Leavenworth, to St. Mary's, and southeast Kansas. 
He died of yellow fever while helping Bishop Gart- 
land in the South. One of my dearest friends and 
visitors was James Duggan, afterwards Bishop of 
Chicago, and previous to that coadjutor bishop of 
St. Louis. For a few years before his ordination 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 171 

as a priest he spent his vacations with me. He 
would bring his gun with him and day after day 
would traverse the neighboring hills and plains in 
search of fowl. He was a trained shot and kept 
my larder filled with the result of his markman- 
ship. He was a handsome, intelligent young man. 
His trips West were a recreation that the physi- 
cians of St. Louis prescribed for him. Although 
athletic in walking, running and jumping, there 
was a latent infirmity that afterwards made him 
an invalid. 

Many a day I walked to the steamboat land- 
ing to shake the hands of Captain Chouteau and 
Captain La Barge. Bishop Miege, S. J., the first 
resident Bishop in Kansas, was a typical Indian 
missionary, a man of letters, with a gentle, kindly 
heart. He resigned his high honors to go back to 
his Jesuit society. The real old-fashioned latch, 
the only protection and means of opening and clos- 
ing my front door, responded to the touch of com- 
ing and going Fathers from West and North. I 
had the pleasure of welcoming the first Benedic- 
tines on their way to Kansas, and took the liberty 
of telling them their ultimate home would be 
Atchison. 

Let me tell you, my dear editor, this thing of 
writing so long and cudgelling my memory is no 
easy job, besides you know the frost of other days 
has made the joints of my fingers stiff, almost 
numb. God bless your paper, the Banner, and 
God bless you for giving me a chance to live with 
fiiends of other days. 

Anon, 

B. Donnelly. 



CHAPTER XIX. 
FATHER DONNELLY, THE MAN. 



IN stature Father Donnelly stood about five 
feet six inches tall. His features were 
strong and prominent and his complexion 
in health ruddy. His shoulders were un- 
usually wide and his frame well knitted, showing 
great physical strength. He was a very counter- 
part in physical structure of his friend. Father 
De Smet. It is said of Father De Smet that when 
a young man in the novitiate near St. Charles the 
work he did in lifting and carrying on his shoul- 
ders trunks and limbs of trees would equal what 
we read in legendary lore of giants, or what we 
see done today in circuses and shows by the strong 
man. But the strong man, the athlete of today, is 
old and broken at thirty-five years. Father Don- 
nelly, like Father De Smet, did not break or bend 
under his great feats, and those feats were not at 
long intervals, but every little while. Father Don- 
nelly would take his share at lifting or moving 
large slabs of stone, and always insisted that he 
should be alone on his side of the stone. His awk- 
wardness on horseback as he rode the first time 
from Kansas City Landing to Independence soon 
disappeared. He in a short while mastered his 
horse and many a time offered his services to break 
in unruly and bucking animals unused to saddle or 
harness. He often mounted on strong- jawed west- 
ern horses and would cry out a dare to wager that 
the beast would not dislodge his tall stove-pipe hat. 
That hat and Father seemed inseparable. He wore 
it in all weathers and everywhere except in the 
Sanctuary and on the church grounds. But even 
then while preaching he would sometimes have the 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 173 

hat brought to him and would hold it in his right 
hand as he emphasized his remarks or gesticulated. 
He was gifted with a wonderful force of character 
and aggressive to a remarkable degree. He had 
all his faculties under perfect control. 

His daily walks were long and uninterrupted 
except to speak to some passerby about the weather 
or prospects of the coming greatness of the city 
or country. The man digging in the streets or the 
foundations of buildings, or in the field, would 
attract him as the magnet does the steel. He had 
to view and suggest how the workman might im- 
prove his style or method of handling shovel or 
pick. He would often take the tool from the labor- 
er's hand and give him a demonstration of how 
speed and efficiency might result. A house in 
course of erection would make him go out of his 
way. The materials would be carefully examined, 
the price of the edifice would be discussed, and 
then the history of the original purchase of the 
property and the various transfers from the gov- 
ernment ownership. The civil engineer would as- 
sert itself in him and he would step off the front 
and rear of the property and wind up by telling 
the square yards in it, and the cubic feet of the 
dislodged earth. He found his way regularly to 
where a hill impeded a projected street and the 
next man he met would have to listen to the time 
it would take to tear down the hill and what it 
would cost to do so, the number of dirt wagons it 
would fill and the time required by a given number 
of laborers to do the work. He was personally 
acquainted with every contractor, many of them 
had secured their contracts through his influence 
with the city officials, and the very men swinging 
the picks and shoveling were brought here by him. 
As those men were all Catholics and his parish- 
ioners he rounded his conversation by advising 



174 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

them about their religious duties and with em- 
phasis would tell them, *'My men, your greatest 
danger is strong drink and your only chance of 
success in life is to keep out of saloons." When 
he heard that any of them were indulging too much, 
he would urge them to take Father Mathew's pledge 
immediately. He would remove his hat, order the 
men to uncover and lift their hands and repeat 
the words of the temperance pledge. Then he 
would take their names and homes or boarding 
places, and hasten to tell the employer that the poor 
fellows would be straight for the future. Many 
a time he would appear at some shop or place where 
weak men were laboring, take their week's wage 
from them and bring it to their wives and families, 
or put it away for them in some secure bank. He 
did not wait for Sunday to teach his people indus- 
try and saving habits, but did his preaching when- 
ever he met them. He was always moving around 
where good might be done. He never tired of 
teaching a love for the foreigner's new country; 
he was forever extolling the advantages of Amer- 
ica. "Help your poor friends in dear old Ireland, 
induce them to come here, and talk less and dream 
less of the old country, and never tire of looking 
up the opportunities before you in the broad fields 
of America. You were farmers in Ireland, and 
keep your ej^es on your first trade; put something 
by and become farmers. The country life in Amer- 
ica is ideal." He sought out opportunities to pur- 
chase farms and would tell the cost price, as well 
as what was the most productive land. Jackson 
County was his first choice, but the new agricul- 
tural country over in Kansas was good and very 
cheap. He induced a colony of new arrivals here 
to purchase a large district near the Missouri River 
where they flourished and grew rich. He would 
ride over to see them occasionally and encourage 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 175 

and advise them as to the newest and best methods 
of farm production. That colony was ever after- 
wards thanking him, and in the great procession 
which followed his remains to St. Mary's Cem- 
etery they formed a large and conspicuous part, 
they swelled the mourning ranks. 

Father Donnelly was always loyal to the land 
of his forefathers. He loved its scenery, he would 
picture its rivers, its many streams of clear water, 
its beautiful lakes. Its soil, he ever maintained, 
was unequaled the world over. But the blight of 
tyranny hung over Ireland. The prospects of a 
Free Ireland did not appear promising if at all 
possible. He was very matter-of-fact and would 
reason that it is better to live untrammeled in 
America and keep living than to die trying to free 
Ireland. He said on one public occasion that it was 
more praiseworthy and more sensible to free Ire- 
land by inducing its people to come in a body to 
America than to remain in suffering and in want 
fighting against the mighty odds and the infernal 
cruelty of the English Government. ''Fate," he 
would continue, '*is as relentlessly cruel to Ireland 
as is its brutish oppressor. Don't go to Heaven 
as a martyr — come to America, and when you die 
go to God as a saint. The fevers and the famines 
and the weather as well are all against our Mother- 
land." In the '70s and '80s Ireland was visited with 
frequent loss of crops, and appeals to America were 
met by generous response. 

Such sentiments, freely and boldly expressed, 
brought forth many criticisms and made many of 
his countrymen think of Father Donnelly as one 
who did not love his native land. "My native land 
was not so kind to me as I am helpful to it," he 
would reply. He seems to have sided with the 
Young Irelands of 1847. Some of the leaders were 
of his time and asre. He sent liberallv in answer 



176 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

to the appeals made in America. He lived to call 
the results of the uprising a "fizzle" — not even 
worth the money America alone sent to its help 
and success. Before that time and ever after, he 
v^as a great admirer of Daniel O'Connell and his 
methods of peaceful protest. When the Fenians' 
fight for the freedom of Ireland was heralded he 
turned a deaf ear, and by way of change, some- 
times a very bitter tongue against England and the 
Fenians. All new efforts against England for Ire- 
land's good, down to the Parnell Movement, were 
looked at askance and with indifference. He openly 
and, in some New York correspondence, in many 
letters said unfriendly things against the Fenian 
agitators. "They are," he writes, in the New York 
Times, "the most modern. Their end will be the 
usual fight on each other. Tell the Irish to come 
over and go to work and grow up with this coun- 
try." He certainly was true to this principle. No 
man, at least west of the Ohio, did so much in 
inducing his countrymen to leave home for our 
shores. A firm of Irishmen in St. Louis, the 
O'Brien Brothers, kept the Missouri Pacific Rail- 
road growing westward by supplying Irish laborers. 
They sent Father Donnelly a New Year's gift in 
1857 and wrote to him and had printed in the St. 
Louis Republic about the same time, that Father 
Donnelly induced more Irishmen to come from Ire- 
land to Missouri than they themselves had. 



CHAPTER XX. 
HIS LIBRARY. 



nONG before Father Donnelly left his native 
land never to return he was conversant 
with American history and geography. He 
had on his person a copy of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. He purchased it in Ire- 
land on his first visit to Dublin when he was a 
young student. It was printed at Boston in the 
year 1816. He had read it and reread it until he 
knew it by heart. His reading made him familiar 
with the lives of Washington and the signers of 
the Declaration of Independence, also the biog- 
raphies of American jurists, generals and states- 
men. Lincoln, Douglas, Clay, Calhoun, and Benton 
he greatly admired and could discuss their sayings 
and repeat passages from their speeches. The his- 
tory of the various states from the Pilgrim landing 
to the new state of Kansas was at the tips of his 
fingers. He put America first among the nations. 
It was his new, his beloved country. He would 
on every possible occasion urge his countrymen to 
love their new country and be true to it. 

Father Donnelly carried a greater supply of 
useful and high-grade knowledge in his later years 
than in younger days, for he was always adding 
to his store and trying never to forget by con- 
stantly keeping up an acquaintance with everything 
new in science, history and art. Protoplasms, neb- 
ular theories, new and startling ventures in the 
field of philosophy, spiritism, all that the best mag- 
azines of the '60s and '70s and the newest books in 
literature were sending forth, were conned over, 
reread and pondered. He believed in security first 
and as a lever to keep himself properly balanced 



178 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

he kept at his elbow his dear old St. Thomas, and 
Kenrick's, Gury's, and Perrone's theologies. When 
treatise after treatise on ontology fell under the 
scrutinizing eye of Rome he would say, "I wish the 
Holy Father would cut out all philosophical class- 
books in our schools and put in their stead St. 
Thomas of Aquin." His prayer was heard, but his 
hearing was closed in death a little while before. 
In literature he loved Moore and quoted from him 
as he did from Virgil and Horace. The American 
poets were dear to his heart and frequently on his 
lips. Bishop Martin Spalding he believed sur- 
passed all the Church writers in America, for his 
writings appealed to the people and were educa- 
tional. The Boston Pilot was a weekly visitor in 
his home and its columns held many a contribution 
by him. But the Catholic editors he rated the high- 
est were Dr. Brownson, McMaster of the Freeman's 
Journal and Father Phelan of the Western Watch- 
man. He often found fault with them, but he 
would amend his criticisms in a moment by saying, 
"They are par excellence the bravest and ablest 
defenders of the Church in America." 

In the pulpit Father Donnelly excelled as a 
plain, thorough expositor of the Gospels. He evi- 
dently prepared himself for his Sunday sermons. 
His language was simple and his words were short 
and Anglo-Saxon. He carefully avoided the verbi- 
age of the Irish sermon books. "It's not English 
at all, but a turning of words from Latin to English 
endings. Avoid the books of sermons from abroad ; 
they have long words by men who finished their 
English courses in Spain, Rome, Douay, and Lou- 
vain. The adults of your parish do not know the 
meaning of these words and the younger genera- 
tion will think you are speaking a foreign tongue. 
Study, young man, the works of Addison and Steele. 
Keep away from the un-English translations from 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 179 

the French and Spanish done by French and Span- 
ish writers, they will injure your style of expres- 
sion and fall upon the unwilling and unreceptive 
ears of the American listeners." 

In his spiritual devotions Father Donnelly was 
regular and frequent. He sought the inside of the 
railing of the Sanctuary to pray his daily rosary, 
and he might be found any forenoon at ten o'clock 
reciting the parts of his office and again at six 
p. m. It was only when the weather was too cold 
that he turned from the Sanctuary to the slight 
comfort of his sitting-room. The church stove was 
never lighted except on Sundays and holy days of 
obligation. No church in Kansas City up to Father 
Donnelly's demise ever had a fire on week days. 
Steam, hot water, hot air furnaces, were unknown 
outside of St. Louis, and few of the churches there 
had the comfort of heat except on Sunday. While 
in his study and within the church property, and 
when not in his quarry or brickyard nearby, he 
might be seen with cassock and beretta, or, as he 
persistently called it, bonicari — he remembered that 
name from his seminary days. In ceremonies of 
the Sanctuary he was most tenacious of his train- 
ing at the Barrens. His Italian and French pro- 
fessors there were his models in many ways. ''Were 
there no other priests there in your day?" he was 
asked. ''Oh, yes, there were, but they were usually 
busy on the outside. They figured in the long sick 
calls and in parish work." The Vincentians' mis- 
sions went from Perry County, Missouri, down 
through the vast Territory and State of Texas. 
This would make him reminiscent, and he would 
recount the hardships and apostolic zeal of the old 
professors and priests of the Barrens. He put 
them on a par with the Jesuits of the West. "But 
the great and tireless Jesuits died in their Society. 
The Lazarists were losing their ablest men in the 



180 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

sciences and the most zealous in the missions, by 
promotion to the mitre. They never sought the 
honors of the episcopate — they were forced on them 
by the Holy See. But the Jesuits in the case of 
De Smet, when he was selected by Rome on one or 
two occasions for the mitre, worked matters with 
the Propaganda at Rome to retain him." Bishops 
Odin, Rosatti, Dominec, Lynch, Ryan, and Timon, 
strong men, all, were Lazarists. Miege of Leaven- 
worth was a Jesuit. He filled his high position 
with honor and apostolic zeal, but his home priests 
were Jesuits, and the Jesuit rule and Jesuit atmos- 
phere permeating his episcopal residence made one 
imagine he was within a Jesuit community house. 
In time, after doing his work well. Bishop Miege 
doffed the mitre and in black cassock and plain 
beretta lived for years back in the Society of Jesus. 

Between his residence near Broadway and 
westward to what is today Washington Avenue, 
Father Donnelly cultivated peach, apple and cherry 
trees. Strawberries and other small fruits grew 
luxuriantly along the outskirts of the property. 
When the season had ripened the fruit he shared 
the luscious products with the Sisters of St. Joseph. 
Then he would meet the neighbors' children and 
invite them to come into his garden, and on stated 
days and hours, and under his eyes, fill themselves. 
"Take home some to your parents and don't injure 
the trees by breaking the limbs." How often, in 
these after years, one may hear lawyers, doctors, 
and business men tell of the treats Father Donnelly 
gave them in their boyhood days! 

He loved to stop and converse with children, 
and how fatherly he would place his hand on their 
heads and bid them be good, and bless their futures. 
When he daily visited his school rooms it was to 
encourage the pupils and to arouse their ambition 
to be good and useful citizens. He was impatient 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 181 

and unwilling to hear from the teachers the pranks 
and faults of the scholars. It would cut his visit 
short if complaints came from the teacher's lips. 
'That will do, never mind, you were once children 
and you are good now," he would say, as he has- 
tened down to the door. Little ones would rush 
from their homes to get his benevolent smile and 
good word as he passed along. He believed candy 
and cakes were good diet for the children and out 
of his bulging pockets he distributed to his loved 
little chums. Occasionally he went from one school 
house to another on his morning stroll. It was 
never to examine or puzzle the young minds with 
questions, so he never interfered with the teacher's 
method or order. He had been a teacher himself 
and he had confidence in the teacher and would 
not injure his standing in his own realm by ques- 
tion or advice. 

Two-thirty o'clock every Saturday afternoon 
and on the days before solemn feasts found him 
in the confessional where he remained until the 
supper hour, then back again until the last person 
left for home; and on Sundays before the Masses 
he resumed his place as confessor. He said his 
two Masses at convenient hours. On the altar he 
was graceful and exact in every point of the ritual. 
His devotion to the sick was marked. He hurried 
to the bedside of the patient and his sympathy for 
the sufferer was that of a father. He cheered and, 
when needed, encouraged. As death approached, 
his visits were more frequent and his prayers by 
the bedside of the dying were eloquent of hope 
and pleading. 

Almost from his arrival and while resident 
pastor of Independence, Father Donnelly saw with 
the growth of southwest Missouri the certainty of 
a bishop's see, and that the location of that see 
would be Kansas City. Early in 1870 he felt that 



182 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

the time was ripe for at least an agitation for the 
new diocese. Father Donnelly was not given to 
letter writing as a habit; in fact, he called "cacoe- 
thes scribendi" a mania. But he would and did 
write letters when there was a need, and one was 
at hand. At that time the Province of St. Louis 
embraced Santa Fe, Denver, Omaha, St. Paul, 
Dubuque, Milwaukee, Chicago, Alton, Green Bay, 
Leavenworth and Nashville. He began a series 
of letters to the archbishop and everyone of the 
suffragans. It was indeed a series, for he wrote 
at intervals of three months for five years. Before 
the result was accomplished the whole Province 
knew that there was a Kansas City and a South- 
west Missouri. The various Bishops became quite 
well acquainted with Father Donnelly's style of 
chirography and finally yielded to his cogent rea- 
sons. The question of a new bishop at Kansas City 
was acted on favorably at a meeting of the bishops 
in His Grace's residence in 1879. Three names of 
deserving priests were sent to Rome. It was said 
the action was unanimous. Two rather unusual 
occurences followed the gathering of the bishops. 
One was that the priests of Milwaukee learned the 
names on the Terna, and presuming that they had 
as much right to divulge the choice of the bishops 
as had the bishop who gave them the information, 
made it public ; the other was that another of the 
bishops had changed his mind about the need, yes, 
the justice of placing two bishops in Western Mis- 
souri. This bishop visited Kansas City, called on 
Father Donnelly, and went with him to St. Teresa's 
Academy to look at a map of Missouri in one of 
the classrooms. He marked out a large area of 
the contemplated diocese where there were no 
Catholics at all. He seemed well acquainted with 
the population of the little cities and the difficul- 
ties of the few priests to maintain themselves. 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 183 

"Why, St. Joseph is too small territorially, and too 
meager in point of Catholics, for a diocese. To 
erect another diocese in this part of Missouri would 
be an injustice to St. Joseph and would make two 
bishops suffer almost for w^ant instead of one, as 
is the case now." He said he was on his way to 
Rome, and in a few days started. In the course of 
a year Rome was heard from. The Bishop of St. 
Joseph was transferred to Kansas City and St. 
Joseph was made tributary to the city on the Kaw. 
Father Donnelly lived to hear the decision of 
Rome. His ambition for Kansas City's recognition 
was attained. 



CHAPTER XXI. 
FATHER DONNELLY ATTENDS A BANQUET. 



E 



•ATHER DONNELLY was not a regular 
correspondent among his brothers of the 
ministry. He seldom visited them and 
they rarely found an excuse to visit the 
little unkept city on the Kaw. His aloofness gained 
him the name of being a recluse and lacking in 
hospitality. In St. Louis where clergymen were 
weighed and measured for a standing, Father Don- 
nelly was heard of only through the young assist- 
ants who had done their bit under his rigorous 
rules. The picture they painted of him would 
hardly come up to the colorful and cheerful can- 
vasses of a Leonardo da Vinci! They belonged 
to the school that preceded the great artists of the 
golden Florentine days. They depicted him in 
sombre and unresponsive hues. The daily break- 
fasts of gruel, the slightly better dinners, the sup- 
pers with meat but once a week, and that a boiled 
chicken, reduced their weight and depressed their 
spirits. They soon tired of the mountain air which 
wafted over the sandy plains of Kanzas. Well, 
their stay with Father Donnelly was usually short, 
and they petitioned a return to St. Louis and never 
more of the West if they could help it. They drew 
for their inquirers a portrait of a man unkept in 
dress, severe in manner, and critical of youth, who 
harnessed his curates down to the routine of their 
clerical duties. Simply that and nothing more. He 
provided them a comfortable room on a plot of 
ground six hundred feet or more from the church, 
where he paid them a morning visit, but let it be 
known that they were not by Western courtesy ex- 
pected to return it. 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 185 

When Westport was a mission tributary to 
Father Donnelly's parish his assistant was per- 
mitted to say Mass there on Sundays and Holydays 
of obligation. It was ''within walking distance." 
up against a gradual elevation to a high level from 
which the country around could be viewed. The 
pastors who had the services of these young men 
after they had graduated under Father Donnelly 
said they were tractable to docility. It was by that 
class of priests that Father Donnelly was made 
known in St. Louis. From his ordination until his 
death, a space of thirty-five years, he had visited 
St. Louis very seldom, possibly four or five times, 
and then called only on his classmates. Father 
Donnelly was as little known in St. Louis as a mis- 
sionary in some distant land. It was said and be- 
lieved that Father Donnelly was years and years 
behind the times, almost an antediluvian. 

The Tuesday after Bishop P. J. Ryan's con- 
secration, which took place April 14th, 1872, all 
the visiting archbishops, bishops and attending 
priests partook of a banquet in his honor given by 
the priests of the diocese. The banquet was in the 
beautiful and spacious hall in Pezolt's new res- 
taurant on Olive Street near 10th. The spread 
was the supreme effort of that far-known caterer. 
Following the banquet, speeches were made by 
bishops and archbishops. Bishop Foley, not yet 
two years in the episcopacy. Bishop of Chicago, 
and native of Baltimore, made the speech of the 
day. He was young and handsome, with all the 
refinement possible, with southern accent, and 
with a flow of wit and humor that brought forth 
applause. He was playfully funny in his refer- 
ences to the guest of honor. Bishop Ryan. He 
spoke of him as a babe two days old. He 
referred to his swaddling clothes. He exalted 
Chicago, and mentioned St. Louis as too old for 



186 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

so young a bridegroom. He saw archbishop's 
honors coming to Chicago, and St. Louis doing the 
best it could to survive until finally it would lean 
on Chicago as an outside town rests on an adjoin- 
ing metropolis. And indeed, St. Louis might yet 
be the residing place of the Vicar-General of Chi- 
cago ! The printed order of toasts ran out with 
Bishop Foley's speech. Bishop Ryan arose to 
thank his friends. He graciously, and with emo- 
tion in eye and accent, thanked all present for 
their kindness. He referred to his happy years 
in the priesthood of St. Louis, the many favors re- 
ceived at the hands of his fellow priests, and ten- 
derly acknowledged the great dignity to which he 
was raised by Archbishop Kenrick, who was ever 
to him a Father as well as a Bishop. He merely 
referred to the pleasantries of Bishop Foley. The 
speech was well-prepared and at times delivered 
in his best oratorical style. The occasion evidently 
seemed to him too solemn to be marred by banter- 
ing. The St. Louis priests wished and demanded 
that some one get back at Bishop Foley. It was 
in order to adjourn, but the priests wanted an- 
other speech. They shouted to Father O'Brien, 
the toastmaster, for just one more speech; Father 
O'Brien arose and waved silence. When quiet 
came, he said: "Gentlemen, there's something 
lacking. You want one more speech and so do L 
There is a priest here who can make that speech. 
You young clergymen don't know, perhaps there 
are not more than a dozen of the older ones who 
do know, him. I know him. We were classmates, 
we were ordained side by side. I now call on 
Father Donnelly of Kansas City to arise. He is 
sitting away down near the end of this room." 
Father arose and as he walked up to the speakers' 
and bishops' table, the priests stood up and 
cheered. There was a smile on his face which 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 187 

lightened up his countenance. He was attired in a 
well fitting clerical suit, fresh from the tailor. 
They saw an intellectual face and a finely shaped 
head. In a clear, distinct voice and with the great- 
est possible composure he began. Compliments all 
around was his introduction. Father Tom Burke, 
the Lazarist, was kindly referred to, and Father 
John McGary, also a Lazarist. The latter was the 
second president of Mount St. Mary's, at Emmets- 
burg. He was the priest who hired young John 
Hughes as gardener around the college, and who 
taught the young man Latin and introduced him 
into the seminary. Turning to Bishop Foley he 
congratulated him on his handsome looks and fine 
speech. His wit as well as his name gave evidence 
of his race. He was the very man to rule the 
destinies of the go-ahead Chicago. And if the 
Bishop may be taken as a revified cinder of the 
burned city, it would seem as if Chicago was ready 
for another blaze. Chicago from its infancy had 
been aglow. When Rome created a diocese in the 
little village on Lake Michigan, it sent a bishop 
from the largest city in the land. New York. Full 
of New York's snap and vigor, Bishop Quarters did 
superhuman work in a few years, and was satis- 
fied to die. The Vice-Provincial of the Jesuits at 
St. Louis, a man of zeal, gifted with the shrewd- 
ness for which the members of that Society are 
noted, took up where the New York Bishop let go. 
In less than three years Bishop Van Der Velde was 
begging to be allowed to seek a home and work in 
a quieter realm and was happy to be awarded the 
see of Natchez, Mississippi. He breathed easier in 
his sunny southern home. The third apostle, with 
the fight of St. Paul in his heart and the books of 
a professor of philosophy and theology in his head, 
and with the constitution of an athletic and a heavy 
Irish brogue born with him in Connaught and 



188 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

growing with his growth, left the seminary in St. 
Louis, determined to conquer or die, but never to 
resign. His first day in Chicago loosened up some- 
thing vital inside of him. Five years in the breezes 
of Lake Michigan made him feel a longing for a 
little rest in the balmy atmosphere of Italy. Dis- 
tance did not lend enchantment to the view, and 
he took up his home in the soothing fogs of Lon- 
don to act as bishop auxiliary to Cardinal Arch- 
bishop Wiseman. Then the polished, gentle 
Bishop Duggan left behind his coadjutorship in St. 
Louis and went forward to propitiate the elements 
in Chicago. He still lives, in the confinement of 
St. Vincent's Hospital, in this city. Baltimore, 
steeped in southern culture, quiet in the repose of 
peace and brotherly contentment, offers its most 
beloved priest, secretary to a Kenrick and a Spald- 
ing, as a pacificator in heart and mind and tongue, 
eloquent and suave, to make a long reign. You 
came, you saw, and no doubt you'll conquer. Your 
aspirations are high and noble. You predict great 
growth and pleasant results. You have thrown out 
your line of diocesan advancement. You predict 
the future great Chicago will cross the Mississippi 
and you plant a Vicar-General in St. Louis, where 
an archbishop now reigns. In your short and 
happy term in Chicago you have outstepped even 
your city's aspirations. But there is a far-looking 
strength and greatness in the Church ruler of St. 
Louis, and there is a wit and cunning in the babe 
of two days who now peeps out of his swaddling 
clothes. Chicago is not a salubrious climate for 
bishops, and it would be well to keep the Vicar 
General nearer the Lake than St. Louis. Bishops 
need their vicars close at home. They are helpful 
stays near the diocesan throne." 

He said many more things, and when he re- 
turned to his place among the younger clergy, 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 189 

plaudits were ringing through the festal chamber. 
Priests were rushing from their seats to shake his 
hand and thank him. His former assistants came 
forward to convince themselves it was the Father 
Donnelly they had served for short spaces in suc- 
cession in Kansas City. 




CO 

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CHAPTER XXII. 
LAST DAYS. 

ON the feast of the Annunciation, 1880, 
Fathers Dunn and Kiely, and two Redemp- 
torists. Fathers Faivre and Firley, were 
guests of the pastor of that church. Father 
Donnelly preached at the solemn high Mass. After 
dinner Father Donnelly surprised the priests when 
he told them he had written his resignation. He 
read them the letter to Archbishop Kenrick. His 
brother priests reasoned long and well with him to 
re'consider, but it was no use. He said his health 
required rest and quiet. In a few days the resigna- 
tion was forwarded. During Holy Week a letter 
from His Grace came to Father Donnelly. It read 
as follows: 

'*Rev. Dear Father Donnelly: Father Doherty, 
pastor of Kirkwood, will take charge of Immac- 
ulate Conception Church on the coming Easter 
Sunday. 

Yours truly, 
tP. R. KENRICK, Abp." 

Short and to the point. No time was lost in 
the writing of that letter. There was no time for 
a recognition of his thirty-five years of apostolic 
work, no time to say a word of thanks for the 
financial wealth he had so freely given Independ- 
ence, Westport, and Kansas City, and the St. Louis 
Arch-diocese. A few weeks previously Father 
Donnelly wrote three letters detailing some of the 
gifts of property he gave the Church at those 
places, and the cash he had expended out of his 
own personal means. He stated in those letters 
that he was nearing his end from disease, and also 



192 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

wrote that he was now without a cent of money 
or a foot of real estate. The same information 
ran through each of the letters, a copy of which 
follows : 

'Tarsonage, Kansas City, Jan. 19, 1880. 

''I am sure you will be pleased to hear that 
an Orphan Asylum is now completed and paid 
for; the entire cost is $16,000. The sum of $11,200 
was obtained for this purpose from the sale of a 
part of the original ten-acre lot left by Father Le 
Roux, which I saved for a period of thirty-five 
years; the balance I saved out of our new Catholic 
Cemetery, with every dollar I could spare for 
three years. I also donated ten acres of land sit- 
uated near the Redemptorist Convent, which I 
bought sixteen years ago for a cemetery. There 
is no debt on the new cemetery. Its 44 acres I pur- 
chased with my own money. I purchased the site 
of the Westport Church and reduced the debt on 
the new church started by Father Doherty. 

''Now I do not own a square foot of real 
estate on the face of the earth, or a dollar in 
money. Some future pastor or perhaps a bishop 
will probably build a cathedral here and bring the 
people and the needs of religion to greater perfec- 
tion. As for me, my course is nearly run. I suffer 
from chest disease. I have never had a vacation. 

"Kansas City is surely to become one of the 
large cities of the United States. Buildings are 
going up all the winter, the present year is ex- 
pected to be the most prosperous of all. The pop- 
ulation at present is estimated at 60,000. The 
writer is as much astonished at what he sees, al- 
though it so happened that he was around here 
before the city was founded at all, as those who 
have come lately. 

"Affectionately yours, 

"Bernard Donnelly." 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 193 

Three copies of this letter were written, one 
to Archbishop Kenrick, another to Bishop Ryan, 
coadjutor bishop, and a third to Father Muehl- 
siepen, V. G. of St. Louis. 

Father Doherty, the successor, arrived here on 
the Saturday before Easter Sunday. Father Don- 
nelly's greeting to him was cordial. He said, *This 
is your parish, and this is the only home I have 
to give you." Taking his hat and overcoat he 
moved to the door, saying, ''God bless you; may 
your days here be long and happy." Father Doherty 
replied to Father Donnelly: *'I want you to stay, 
this will be your home as long as you live. I'll 
find quarters somewhere in the parish until the 
people build me a residence." It was no use. Father 
Donnelly went forth. He had no home in sight, he 
had no money to purchase food or shelter. As he 
moved outside to the streets, some Sisters from 
St. Joseph's Hospital passing by hailed him and 
hearing his story, said to him: ''Father Donnelly, 
the Sisters of St. Joseph owe you all they have in 
Kansas City. They foresaw what was coming and 
there is a comfortable room awaiting you in St. 
Joseph's Hospital." They retraced their steps to 
the hospital and bade Father Donnelly go with 
them, where he would have a home and care as 
long as he lived. 

His remaining days were not many. Disease 
was weakening him. When the sun shone he 
would move around. His steps were slow and 
tottering, but the smile of recognition as he met 
a friend here and there lit his wan face. In 
November he went to bed to get up no more. The 
attention of the good Sisters was unremitting. All 
that physicians could do was exhausted, and a few 
minutes past 4 p. m., December 15th, 1880, 
Father Donnelly's soul went back to his God, 
who does not forget and who repays for services 



194 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

rendered. It was a coincidence, it was by the di- 
rection of a moving Spirit, it was a coming together 
that was not arranged for — every priest in Kansas 
City, without a call from anybody, without a knowl- 
edge of his coming dissolution, was at Father 
Donnelly's bedside when his spirit went forth. The 
day previous and the morning of the day of his 
death, the inquiring clergy were told that Father 
Donnelly had rested the night before and would 
likely survive several days. The writer, who knew 
him longest and best, was the first to reach his 
side. Death was coming very fast. Before he had 
read far in the prayers for the dying, the priests 
were all kneeling in the sick chamber and answer- 
ing the invocations for a happy death. The Sis- 
ters, too, were there from the parish schools, from 
St. Teresa's Academy, and the Sisters of the hos- 
pital. When the end had come, priests and Sisters 
lingered to pray for the departed. A worthy man, 
a true priest, and an indefatigable worker had left 
the scene of years of truly apostolic zeal for the 
glory of God and the good of man. 

Early in the afternoon before the day of the 
funeral, the children of the Immaculate Concep- 
tion Parish, and of Annunciation and St. Patrick's, 
followed by fully two thousand people from all 
parts of the city, escorted Father Donnelly's re- 
mains to his church. When the iDrocession arrived 
at Broadway and 11th Streets there was a crowd 
awaiting the corpse, that filled sidewalks and 
streets up to the church doors. The aisles and pews 
were packed to the Sanctuary. It was one dense 
throng of mourning friends and admirers, who 
showed by their tears and sobs that a loved Father 
was dead. All during the night there was a stream 
of people passing in and out after viewing the re- 
mains. Volunteers gave their services to leading 
in the rosary and litanies that never died out for 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 195 

a moment until the first tones of the organ an- 
nounced the hour for the Requiem services and the 
entrance into the Sanctuary of over one hundred 
priests from St. Louis and all the cities and towns 
in the West. One hundred priests forty years ago 
meant more than lived east and west of the banks 
of the Missouri River this side of St. Louis. The 
solemn High Mass was chanted and every priest 
present went with the funeral cortege out to the 
new Mount St. Mary's Cemetery to see the remains 
of a great priest buried within the cemetery he 
donated and in the grave he selected, where he often 
said he wished to sleep for all time — but, without 
rest in life, his tired bones were not to be allowed 
to rest in death. 

The irony of fate seemed to follow Father 
Donnelly into the grave. Sunday after Sunday 
he declaimed against the extravagant funeral pro- 
cessions that conveyed the dead to the cemeteries. 
"You, my dear people," he would say, ''go to ex- 
tremes in your lavish expenditures at funerals. 
You spend money you cannot afford on carriages 
and buggies; you incur debts and are forced to 
deny yourselves and your families becoming attire 
and the necessities of life as a result. At times 
many of you have lost your jobs by staying away 
from your places of employment a half and fre- 
quently a whole day in going and coming from the 
cemetery. When death enters your homes you 
spend so recklessly you are indebted to undertaker 
and carriage owners for months." 

When the news of Father Donnelly's death was 
spread abroad numbers of his friends met in a 
public hall to arrange for a funeral that would 
show their appreciation of a good priest and citi- 
zen. A committee was appointed. A brass band 
was first on their list, then carriages for pall- 
bearers and for friends unable to bear the expense 



196 Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 

of conveyances for themselves. They selected a 
coffin costing over $900. Such a display has never 
been equalled in the history of Kansas City, even 
to the present day. The newspapers the follov^ing 
day said there v^ere 118 buggies, 75 carriages, 3 
omnibusses, and 22 other vehicles, making in all 
219 conveyances in the procession, which was two 
miles long and required forty-five minutes to pass 
a given point. 

Father Donnelly had often concluded his re- 
monstrances against the extravagance and show of 
modern funerals with the remarks, "When I am 
dead I shall not have need of a will, for I shall 
have no money to distribute. I want a plain pine- 
board coffin, and wish no display of carriages and 
buggies." 

When the undertaker had drawn up his state- 
ment of the costs, he could find no person or per- 
sons willing to assume any financial responsibility 
— they had acted as a committee only. All of 
Father Donnelly's own property had been given 
to the churches and educational and charitable in- 
stitutions during his lifetime. A deed returned to 
Father Donnelly by Archbishop Kenrick about the 
time of his death, and found several weeks after 
his burial, furnished the means of a final settle- 
ment of his funeral expenses. 

Father Donnelly's remains rested for a time 
in Mount St. Mary's Cemetery, his personal gift 
to the Catholics of Kansas City. When the new 
Cathedral was completed they were taken from the 
grave and placed beneath a side aisle in the Sanc- 
tuary. He lies in the original ten acres left by 
Father Le Roux and so carefully guarded by him 
against the efforts of committees to sell it or ex- 
change it, or to partition it for the erection of new 
parishes. 



Life of Father Bernard Donnelly 197 

Peace to your soul, Kansas City's great Pastor 
and Provider! Your sagacity did more to build 
the Cathedral than did the contributions of Kansas 
City's Catholics. Your loving care provided an 
asylum for the orphan, a hospital for the sick and 
the dying, and a cemetery for the dead. You 
opened the first school for the little ones of your 
flock, and out of your savings helped erect the 
first academy for higher education. Your loyalty 
to your city in counsel and assistance when it was 
a struggling landing-place was side by side with 
your efforts in upbuilding the cause of religion. 
Your zeal for Kansas City and for its growth to 
your oft-predicted metropolitan greatness had no 
selfish motive. Your grave has no marker of sil- 
ver or brass to tell where your ashes lie. No shaft 
of marble points heavenward in cemetery, park 
or boulevard to say that you were Kansas City's 
faithful friend and helper in its infancy and in its 
struggling days when war and nature's obstacles 
threatened its very life. But your memory is kept 
alive by the property you donated to and preserved 
for the Church, by the institutions of charity and 
learning you were instrumental in founding, by the 
presence of those religious orders (both men and 
women) who came at your invitation — yes, verily 
by your works, oh good and faithful servant in 
the vineyard of the King of kings, are you known 
and remembered in the place where you accom- 
plished so much good. ETERNAL REST IN 
HEAVEN, Father Donnelly, is the prayer of the 
writer of your long-deferred Biography and will 
stand as 

FINIS 




Mott 

CKNOWLEDGMENT is hereby 
gratefully made for the photographs 
so kindly furnished the author; 

To D. P. Thomson 

for the portrait of Father Donnelly. 

To The Photographic and Vie^w Company 

for the pictures of Father Donnelly's Church, 
St. Joseph's Orphan Asylum, and the two views 
of St. Teresa's Academy. 

To Anderson Photo Company 

for the views of Redemptorist Church. 



